Related papers: Cryogenic Cometary Sample Return
Earth and Titan are two planetary bodies formed far from each other. Nevertheless the chemical composition of their atmospheres exhibits common indications of being produced by the accretion, plus ulterior in-situ processing of cometary…
Here we review some of the major findings of the mass spectrometer suite ROSINA on board of ESA's Rosetta spacecraft to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. For more than 2 years, ROSINA continuously measured the composition of the gases…
The past century of interstellar dust has brought us from first ignoring it to finding that it plays an important role in the evolution of galaxies. Current observational results in our galaxy provide a complex physical and chemical…
The properties of the ices that form in dense molecular clouds represent an important set of initial conditions in the evolution of interstellar and preplanetary matter in regions of active star formation. Of the various spectral features…
Noble gases provide tracers of cosmic provenance that are accessible to a future Uranus Atmospheric Probe. Argon and krypton are expected to be well-mixed on Uranus with respect to H$_2$ and He, although condensation at the winter pole may…
Complex Organic Molecules (COMs) are considered crucial molecules, since they are connected with organic chemistry, at the basis of the terrestrial life. More pragmatically, they are molecules in principle difficult to synthetize in the…
The supersolar abundances of volatiles observed in giant planets suggest that a compositional gradient was present at the time of their formation in the protosolar nebula. To explain this gradient, several studies have investigated the…
Knowledge of the nucleosynthetic isotope composition of the outermost protoplanetary disk is critical to understand the formation and early dynamical evolution of the Solar System. We report the discovery of outer disk material preserved in…
The presence of numerous complex organic molecules (COMs; defined as those containing six or more atoms) around protostars shows that star formation is accompanied by an increase of molecular complexity. These COMs may be part of the…
Impacts by rocky and icy bodies are thought to have played a key role in shaping the composition of solar system objects, including the Earth's habitability. Hence, it is likely that they play a similar role in exoplanetary systems. We…
It has been suggested that shock waves in the solar nebula formed the high temperature materials observed in meteorites and comets. It is shown that the temperatures at the inner rim of the solar nebula could have been high enough over a…
Many questions in physical cosmology regarding the thermal history of the intergalactic medium, chemical enrichment, reionization, etc. are thought to be intimately related to the nature and evolution of pregalactic structure. In particular…
Isotopic ratios provide a powerful tool for understanding the origins of materials, including the volatile and refractory matter within solar system bodies. Recent high sensitivity observations of molecular isotopologues, in particular with…
Dust jets, i.e. fuzzy collimated streams of cometary material arising from the nucleus, have been observed in-situ on all comets since the Giotto mission flew by comet 1P/Halley in 1986. Yet their formation mechanism remains unknown.…
Comets are classified from their orbital characteristics into two separate classes: nearly-isotropic, mainly long-period comets and ecliptic, short-period comets. Members from the former class are coming from the Oort cloud. Those of the…
Tiny meteoroids entering the Earth's atmosphere and inducing meteor showers have long been thought to originate partly from cometary dust. Together with other dust particles, they form a huge cloud around the Sun, the zodiacal cloud. From…
We use a newly developed cascade model of turbulent concentration of particles in protoplanetary nebulae to calculate several properties of interest to the formation of primitive planetesimals and to the meteorite record. The model follows,…
Comets are small bodies thought to contain the most pristine material in the solar system. However, since their formation 4.5 Gy ago, they have been altered by different processes. While not exposed to much electromagnetic radiation, they…
Comets are thought to preserve almost pristine dust particles, thus providing a unique sample of the properties of the early solar nebula. The microscopic properties of this dust played a key part in particle aggregation during the…
The first stage of planet formation is the accumulation of dust and ice grains into mm-cm-sized pebbles. These pebbles can clump together through the streaming instability and form gravitationally bound pebble 'clouds'. Pebbles inside such…