Abstract To date, the parent body of mesosiderites remains uncertain. Some candidate bodies have been proposed, including 4 Vesta and 16 Psyche. In this study, we performed a comprehensive spectroscopic survey of mesosiderites and pyroxene+metal mixtures to determine the factors that control their reflectance spectra in the 0.3–2.5 μ m region and to help better identify possible parent bodies. We also applied these results to several well-known parent-body targets. We found that the mesosiderite powder and pyroxene powder on a metal slab both show significant differences in their spectra compared to Psyche. Although the spectra of the 10:90 orthopyroxene+metal powder was similar to that of Psyche, this does not necessarily mean that there is only a small amount (∼10%) of pyroxene on the surface of Psyche. Taking into account the density of Psyche, we infer that there might be a large amount of low-iron pyroxene on its surface. Looking in more detail at the spectral metrics, we note that some forms of some mesosiderites match some aspects of Psyche. Since some spectral metrics and ferrosilite content of howardites, diogenites, and mesosiderites are similar, the possibility of Vesta being a mesosiderite parent body cannot be ruled out either. However, the higher metal content of mesosiderites favors them, over howardites and diogenites, being linked to Psyche.
Wang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.