67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko tagged posts

The Salt of the Comet

A plume of dust from Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, seen by the OSIRIS Wide Angle Camera on ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft on 3 July 2016. The shadow of the plume is cast across the basin, which is in the Imhotep region. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

More than 30 years ago, the European comet mission Giotto flew past Halley’s comet. The Bernese ion mass spectrometer IMS, led by Prof. em. Hans Balsiger, was on board. A key finding from the measurements taken by this instrument was that there appeared to be a lack of nitrogen in Halley’s coma – the nebulous covering of comets which forms when a comet passes close to the sun...

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Did Key Building Blocks for Life come from Deep Space?

Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

All living beings need cells and energy to replicate. Without these fundamental building blocks, living organisms on Earth would not be able to reproduce and would simply not exist. Little was known about a key element in the building blocks, phosphates, until now. University of Hawaii at Manoa researchers, in collaboration with colleagues in France and Taiwan, provide compelling new evidence that this component for life was found to be generated in outer space and delivered to Earth in its first one billion years by meteorites or comets. The phosphorus compounds were then incorporated in biomolecules found in cells in living beings on Earth.

The breakthrough research is outlined in “An Interstellar Synthesis of Phosphorus Oxoacids,” authore...

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Molecular Oxygen in Comet’s Atmosphere not created on its Surface

View of comet 67P taken by Rosetta. Credit: European Space Agency

View of comet 67P taken by Rosetta.
Credit: European Space Agency

Scientists have found that molecular oxygen around comet 67P is not produced on its surface, as some suggested, but may be from its body. The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft escorted comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on its journey round the sun from August 2014 – September 2016, dropping a probe and eventually crashing onto its surface.

When the comet is close enough to the sun the ice on its surface ‘sublimes’ – transforms from solid to gas – forming a gas atmosphere called a coma. Analysis of the coma by instruments on Rosetta revealed that it contained not only water, CO and CO2, as anticipated, but also molecular oxygen.

Molecular oxygen is O2, and on Earth it is essential for life, where it is produced by photo...

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