... trace their heritage to the interstellar medium from which the protosolar nebula eventually emerged. The most recent cometary space mission, Rosetta , carried instruments designed to characterize, in unprecedented detail, the organic species in comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (67P). Rosetta...

... Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko ( Meech 2017 ). Molecular species that sublimate directly from a comet's nucleus are called “parent molecules” and their photo-dissociation products are called “daughter species”. Most of the species observed at optical wavelengths do not represent...

...Figure 7.2 Exploration of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the ESA-NASA Rosetta probe. (a) 67P/G-C upon arrival. (b) Artist’s view of the Rosetta spacecraft, with insert showing the double focusing mass spectrometer (DFMS) of the ROSINA instrument that analysed volatiles released...

...F igure 5 An agglomerate dust particle from comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, as collected by COSIMA (cometary secondary ion mass analyzer). The image was obtained using grazing illumination from the right. The length of the shadows indicates that the altitude above the substrate reaches about...

.... Prior to the investigation of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko by the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission (Grady et al. 2018 this issue), there had been close encounters with six other comets ( Fig. 1 ). Rosetta included both a rendezvous spacecraft for extended measurements near the comet...

... density. Matter must have assembled with low relative speed to create the contact-binary and onion-shell morphology of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, observed in close proximity by the Rosetta mission (see Grady et al. 2018 this issue). Once they had formed, some comets were scattered during close...

..., the Rosetta spacecraft orbited, and deposited a probe on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, as described by Grady et al. (2018 this issue). In many ways, we live at the perfect time to be “cometologists”. However, the mission that most cometologists most desire to see would be a truly cryogenic (<−180 °C...

... thousand grains of dust from comet Wild 2 to Earth? We collectively shared the despair when communication was lost from Rosetta 's Philae lander on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, and the excitement about the unparalleled wealth of information sent back during its 70 hours of life on the comet's...

..., the determination of the water/dust ratio is more complex and requires accurate modeling of the light scattered by the dust particles. Detailed observations in the 3-µm region of the nucleus of comet 67P Churyumov Gerasimenko revealed the general absence of water ice on its surface, and that hydrogen is instead...

... Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars 2007 LRS chirp 5 2 75 100 Kaguya moon 2007 CONSERT impulse 90 10 30 10–100 Rosetta (orbiter/lander) 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet 2004 MOSIR chirp 2.5/17.5–40 5–20 30–7.5 265–800 Tianwen-1 Mars 2020 RIME chirp 9 1/3 50/150 TBD JUICE...

... internally. The issue is unresolved, but recent data may support the latter hypothesis. That is, the upper limit on Titan’s atmospheric 84 Kr/CH 4 ratio (<10 −6 ) from the Huygens probe is much lower than the value (~8 × 10 −5 ) determined at comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko by the European Space...

... the University of Akron. REFERENCES Anders E ( 1989 ) Pre-biotic organic matter from comets and asteroids . Nature 342 : 255 - 257 Altwegg K 31 coauthors ( 2016 ) Prebiotic chemicals—amino acid and phosphorus—in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko . Science Advances...

... Rosetta mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa return mission to the “S-type” asteroid Itokawa, and NASA's Dawn mission to asteroids Vesta and Ceres) can provide additional data about samples that date from the very earliest times in our solar...