Organic compounds on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko revealed by COSAC mass spectrometry

Fred Goesmann (1) , Helmut Rosenbauer (1) , Jan Hendrik Bredehoft (2) , Michel Cabane (3) , Pascale Ehrenfreund (4, 5) , Thomas Gautier (6) , Chaitanya Giri (7, 1) , Harald Krüger (1) , Léna Le Roy (8) , A. J. Macdermott (9) , Susan Mckenna-Lawlor (10) , Uwe J. Meierhenrich (7) , Guillermo M. Muñoz Caro (11) , François Raulin (12) , Reinhard Roll (1) , Andrew Steele (13) , Harald Steininger (1) , Robert Sternberg (12) , Cyril Szopa (3) , Wolfram Thiemann (2) , Stephan Ulamec (14)

1 MPS - Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research
2 IAPC - Institute for Applied and Physical Chemistry [Bremen]
3 PLANETO - LATMOS
4 Leiden Observatory [Leiden]
5 Space Policy Institute [Washington]
6 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
7 ICN - Institut de Chimie de Nice
8 CSH - Center for Space and Habitability
9 University of Houston [Clear Lake]
10 Space Technology Ireland Limited
11 CAB - Centro de Astrobiologia [Madrid]
12 LISA (UMR_7583) - Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques
13 Geophysical Laboratory [Carnegie Institution]
14 DLR - German Aerospace Center

Comets harbor the most pristine material in our solar system in the form of ice, dust, silicates, and refractory organic material with some interstellar heritage. The evolved gas analyzer Cometary Sampling and Composition (COSAC) experiment aboard Rosetta’s Philae lander was designed for in situ analysis of organic molecules on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Twenty-five minutes after Philae’s initial comet touchdown, the COSAC mass spectrometer took a spectrum in sniffing mode, which displayed a suite of 16 organic compounds, including many nitrogen-bearing species but no sulfur-bearing species, and four compounds—methyl isocyanate, acetone, propionaldehyde, and acetamide—that had not previously been reported in comets.

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Astrophysics [astro-ph]; Earth and Planetary Astrophysics [astro-ph.EP]

Fred Goesmann, Helmut Rosenbauer, Jan Hendrik Bredehoft, Michel Cabane, Pascale Ehrenfreund, et al.. Organic compounds on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko revealed by COSAC mass spectrometry. Science, 2015, 349 (6247), pp.aab0689. ⟨10.1126/science.aab0689⟩. ⟨insu-01182551⟩