... 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...

... science communication: make good use of our many enthusiastic and convincing (and young!) faces as communicators, and make more use of audio-visual tools. More broadly, we could learn much from the comet researchers: no one seriously questions the value of the Rosetta mission, although the benefits...

... et al. 2011 ). The Rosetta mission also observed strong dichotomies in the relative ratios of CO 2 /H 2 O between the northern and southern hemispheres of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, as well as changing mixing ratios of less abundant molecules, as seen from in situ near-IR measurements...

... little about comets and their origin because samples are scarce, degraded, and generally in very small abundance, and because in situ measurements performed by analysers on past spacecrafts lacked precision. However, two recent missions, Stardust, which sampled grains from comet 81P/Wild 2, and Rosetta...

... ( 2018 ) The Rosetta Mission and the chemistry of organic species in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko . Elements 14 : 95 – 100 Hartogh P and 12 coauthors ( 2011 ) Ocean-like water in the Jupiter-family comet 103P/Hartley 2 . Nature 478 : 218 – 220 Hills JG ( 1981...

.... Detailed study of actual cometary bodies, what they are made of and how they evolve, requires close-up investigation by spacecraft. 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...

... of discoveries of new extra-solar planetary systems. Before too long, if all goes to plan, we have the promise of new insights into Titan and somewhat later the first proper investigation into a comet with the Rosetta mission of the European Space Agency. These are, of course, early days and many surprises...

... dust particles (IDPs) collected in the Earth's stratosphere, in unmelted micrometeorites (MMs), and in cometary particles returned by the Stardust mission and studied in situ by the Rosetta mission. The study of organics in extraterrestrial materials is an inherently difficult activity. Most...

.... , 2018 ). Previous planetary instruments that have acquired reflectance data at NIR wavelengths and detected possible organic compounds include the Visible and InfraRed Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on ESA’s Rosetta mission and a similar instrument on NASA’s Dawn mission (where it is called...

... II), and the multispectral Sentinel-2 sensor (Scenario III). A stepwise multiple linear regression method was used for each scenario to derive STFs. We further tested laboratory- and soil-map-based HYPRES and Rosetta pedotransfer functions (PTFs) to parameterize MvG parameters and thus provide soil...

... 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...

... Current mission (launched 2004) Modulus Ptolemy Evolved Gas Analyser instrument on board Rosetta (ESA mission to characterize the comet 67 P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko) includes a miniaturized GC/MS system with an ion trap mass spectrometer particularly developed for isotope ratio measurements of solid...

... . Icarus 165 : 391 – 406 Glassmeier K-H , Boehnhardt H , Koschny D , Kührt E ( 2007 ) The Rosetta Mission: flying towards the origin of the solar system . Space Sci Rev 128 : 1 – 21 Greenberg JM ( 1982 ) What are comets made of? A model based on interstellar...

... rewritten second edition of a 1997 conference volume. Since the publication of the original work, there have been theoretical and practical advances in this fast-moving field. For example, several cometary and asteroid sampling missions are either, like Rosetta and Hayabusa , in progress or, like...

.... The milligram-sized samples, alongside data from cometary missions (Europe's ESA Rosetta Mission), will provide exceptional, essential, and priceless information on the nature of carbon in the early solar system. This will enable a more robust assessment of the formation and evolution of Earth's volatile...

... and technology already developed for the Rosetta cometary mission to conduct visible and IR mapping of the surface and the first radar mission to Mars, which is eagerly anticipated by geophysicists. Also, the Beagle 2 lander will be targeted at Isidis Basin, a large impact feature in the northern “tropics...

..., is the implementation of SDDs instead of Si PIN diodes ( Fig. 6 ). Experience with SDDs has already been gained with the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS), which is also part of the payload of the Mars Exploration Rovers ( Fig. 2 ; Rieder et al . 2003 ) as well as the ROSETTA mission, launched in 2004...

... (e.g. the NASA Galileo and the ESA Rosetta missions), which are not discussed here due to space limitation, but they have contributed greatly to our current understanding of asteroids. While Eros and Itokawa belong to the same S taxonomic class, their spacecraft-imaged surfaces show two drastically...

... from four landing sites, covering more than 50 km of traverse on diverse terrain, allow detailed assessment of the geology of Mars. Here we discuss the APXS method and instrument as well as some of the results from the current MER and MSL missions. The APXS irradiates a sample with alpha...