Planetary Mineralogy
The school associated with this volume was inspired by the recent advances in our understanding of the nature and evolution of our Solar System that have come from the missions to study and sample asteroids and comets, and the very successful Mars orbiters and landers. At the same time our horizons have expanded greatly with the discovery of extrasolar protoplanetary disks, planets and planetary systems by space telescopes. The continued success of such telescopic and robotic exploration requires a supply of highly skilled people and so one of the goals of the Glasgow school was to help build a community of early-career planetary scientists and space engineers.
Organics in primitive meteorites
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Published:January 01, 2015
Abstract
Comets and the asteroidal parents of chondritic meteorites formed from primitive materials in the early Solar System, including water and organics, and have remained undifferentiated since their accretion. Thus, dust particles and meteorites derived from these bodies that are available for study in the laboratory contain constituents of the solar nebula, although we must always be mindful that post-accretionary processing within parent bodies may have modified the original components, including organics, and synthesized new materials. A review of the organics that have been recovered in the most primitive of the chondritic meteorites is presented here. Similar material that occurs in interplanetary dust particles and micrometeorites, and in cometary grains returned to Earth by the Stardust mission, is discussed. A focus of the review is on materials that can be studied by laboratory techniques including gas source mass spectrometry, secondary ion mass spectrometry and other organic chemistry methods.
- accretion
- amino acids
- asteroids
- C-13/C-12
- carbon
- chondrites
- comets
- cosmic dust
- cosmochemistry
- early solar system
- geochemistry
- hydrocarbons
- interplanetary dust
- ion probe
- isotope ratios
- isotopes
- mass spectroscopy
- meteorites
- methods
- molecular structure
- N-15/N-14
- nitrogen
- O-18/O-16
- organic acids
- organic compounds
- oxygen
- spectroscopy
- stable isotopes
- Stardust Mission
- stony meteorites
- ultraviolet spectroscopy