Related papers: Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko rotation changes d…

Spin state predictions for defunct satellites in geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO) are valuable for active debris removal and servicing missions as well as material shedding studies and attitude-dependent solar radiation pressure (SRP)…

Cometary surfaces can change significantly and rapidly due to the sublimation of their volatile material. Many authors have investigated this evolution; Vincent et al. (2017) have used topographic data from all comets visited by spacecrafts…

European Space Agency's Rosetta mission is the only space mission that performed long-term monitoring of comet at close distances. Its over two years' rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko revealed diverse evolutionary processes…

The Ion Composition Analyzer (ICA) on the Rosetta spacecraft observed both the solar wind and the cometary ionosphere around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for nearly two years. However, observations of low energy cometary ions were…

Context. Comets are primitive objects, remnants of the volatile-rich planetesimals from which the solar system condensed. Knowing their structure and composition is thus crucial for the understanding of our origins. After the successful…

The moment of inertia for nuclear collective rotations is derived within a semiclassical approach based on the Inglis cranking and Strutinsky shell-correction methods, improved by surface corrections within the nonperturbative…

The nucleus of the Jupiter-family comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was discovered to be bi-lobate in shape when the European Space Agency spacecraft Rosetta first approached it in July 2014. The bi-lobate structure of the cometary nucleus…

The physical properties of cometary nuclei observed today relate to their complex history and help to constrain their formation and evolution. In this article, we review some of the main physical properties of cometary nuclei and focus in…

Anisotropic outgassing from comets exerts a torque sufficient to rapidly change the angular momentum of the nucleus, potentially leading to rotational instability. Here, we use empirical measures of spin changes in a sample of comets to…

We observed Comet C/Siding Spring using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during its close approach to Mars. The high spatial resolution images obtained through the F689M, F775W, and F845M filters reveal the characteristics of the dust coma.…

Both General Relativistic (GR) precession and the Lidov-Kozai mechanism, separately, are known to play an important role in the orbital evolution of solar system bodies. Previous works have studied these two mechanisms independently in…

Aims. We aim to determine whether dissociative excitation of cometary neutrals by electron impact is the major source of far-ultraviolet (FUV) emissions at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in the southern hemisphere at large heliocentric…

Ejection of large boulder-like debris is a vigorous form of cometary activity that is unlikely induced by water ice out-gassing alone but rather associated with the sublimation of super-volatile ices. Though perceived on several comets,…

The nuclei of active comets emit molecules anisotropically from discrete vents. As the nucleus rotates, we expect to observe periodic variability in the molecular emission line profiles, which can be studied through mm/submm spectroscopy.…

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) was imaged with the 2m telescope at Mt. Wendelstein Observatory in the Alps. Coma and tail monitoring was performed during 51 nights between 22 August 2015 and 9 May 2016. The images through r and i…

Molecular oxygen has been detected in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov--Gerasimenko with a mean abundance of 3.80 $\pm$ 0.85\% by the ROSINA mass spectrometer on board the Rosetta spacecraft. To account for the presence of this species in…

During its two years mission around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, ESA's Rosetta spacecraft had the unique opportunity to follow closely a comet in the most active part of its orbit. Many studies have presented the typical features…

On 3 July 2016, several instruments on board ESA's Rosetta spacecraft detected signs of an outburst event on comet 67P, at a heliocentric distance of 3.32 AU from the sun, outbound from perihelion. We here report on the inferred properties…

The Langmuir Probe instrument on Rosetta monitored the photoelectron emission cur- rent of the probes during the Rosetta mission at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, in essence acting as a photodiode monitoring the solar ultraviolet…

Context: The ionosphere of a comet is known to deflect the solar wind through mass loading, but the interaction is dependent on cometary activity. We investigate the details of this process at comet 67P using the Rosetta Ion Composition…