Henning Fischer

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko sheds dust coat accumulated over the past four years

Comets are composed of dust and frozen gases. The ices are mixed with the refractory material either as an icy conglomerate, or as an aggregate of pre-solar grains (grains that existed prior to the formation of the Solar System), mantled by an ice layer. The presence of water-ice grains in periodic comets is now well established. Modelling of infrared spectra obtained about ten kilometres from the nucleus of comet Hartleyxa02 suggests that larger dust particles are being physically decoupled from fine-grained water-ice particles that may be aggregates, which supports the icy-conglomerate model. It is known that comets build up crusts of dust that are subsequently shed as they approach perihelion. Micrometre-sized interplanetary dust particles collected in the Earth’s stratosphere and certain micrometeorites are assumed to be of cometary origin. Here we report that grains collected from the Jupiter-family comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko come from a dusty crust that quenches the material outflow activity at the comet surface. The larger grains (exceeding 50 micrometres across) are fluffy (with porosity over 50 per cent), and many shattered when collected on the target plate, suggesting that they are agglomerates of entities in the size range of interplanetary dust particles. Their surfaces are generally rich in sodium, which explains the high sodium abundance in cometary meteoroids. The particles collected to date therefore probably represent parent material of interplanetary dust particles. This argues against comet dust being composed of a silicate core mantled by organic refractory material and then by a mixture of water-dominated ices. At its previous recurrence (orbital period 6.5xa0years), the comet’s dust production doubled when it was between 2.7 and 2.5 astronomical units from the Sun, indicating that this was when the nucleus shed its mantle. Once the mantle is shed, unprocessed material starts to supply the developing coma, radically changing its dust component, which then also contains icy grains, as detected during encounters with other comets closer to the Sun.

Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko: Close-up on Dust Particle Fragments

The COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser instrument on board ESAs Rosetta mission has collected dust particles in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. During the early-orbit phase of the Rosetta mission, particles and particle agglomerates have been imaged and analyzed in the inner coma at distances between 100 km and 10 km off the cometary nucleus and at more than 3 AU from the Sun. We identified 585 particles of more than 14 μm in size. The particles are collected at low impact speeds and constitute a sample of the dust particles in the inner coma impacting and fragmenting on the targets. The sizes of the particles range from 14 μm up to sub-millimeter sizes and the differential dust flux size distribution is fitted with a power law exponent of -3.1. After impact, the larger particles tend to stick together, spread out or consist of single or a group of clumps, and the flocculent morphology of the fragmented particles is revealed. The elemental composition of the dust particles is heterogeneous and the particles could contain typical silicates like olivine and pyroxenes, as well as iron sulfides. The sodium to iron elemental ratio is enriched with regard to abundances in CI carbonaceous chondrites by a factor from ˜1.5 to ˜15. No clear evidence for organic matter has been identified. The composition and morphology of the collected dust particles appear to be similar to that of interplanetary dust particles.

High-molecular-weight organic matter in the particles of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

The presence of solid carbonaceous matter in cometary dust was established by the detection of elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen in particles from comet 1P/Halley. Such matter is generally thought to have originated in the interstellar medium, but it might have formed in the solar nebula—the cloud of gas and dust that was left over after the Sun formed. This solid carbonaceous material cannot be observed from Earth, so it has eluded unambiguous characterization. Many gaseous organic molecules, however, have been observed; they come mostly from the sublimation of ices at the surface or in the subsurface of cometary nuclei. These ices could have been formed from material inherited from the interstellar medium that suffered little processing in the solar nebula. Here we report the in situ detection of solid organic matter in the dust particles emitted by comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko; the carbon in this organic material is bound in very large macromolecular compounds, analogous to the insoluble organic matter found in the carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. The organic matter in meteorites might have formed in the interstellar medium and/or the solar nebula, but was almost certainly modified in the meteorites’ parent bodies. We conclude that the observed cometary carbonaceous solid matter could have the same origin as the meteoritic insoluble organic matter, but suffered less modification before and/or after being incorporated into the comet.

Dust particle flux and size distribution in the coma of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko measured in situ by the COSIMA instrument on board Rosetta

Context. The COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyzer (COSIMA) on board Rosetta is dedicated to the collection and compositional analysis of the dust particles in the coma of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P). Aims. Investigation of the physical properties of the dust particles collected along the comet trajectory around the Sun starting at a heliocentric distance of 3.5 AU. Methods. The flux, size distribution, and morphology of the dust particles collected in the vicinity of the nucleus of comet 67P were measured with a daily to weekly time resolution. Results. The particles collected by COSIMA can be classified according to their morphology into two main types: compact particles and porous aggregates. In low-resolution images, the porous material appears similar to the chondritic-porous interplanetary dust particles collected in Earth’s stratosphere in terms of texture. We show that this porous material represents 75% in volume and 50% in number of the large dust particles collected by COSIMA. Compact particles have typical sizes from a few tens of microns to a few hundreds of microns, while porous aggregates can be as large as a millimeter. The particles are not collected as a continuous flow but appear in bursts. This could be due to limited time resolution and/or fragmentation either in the collection funnel or few meters away from the spacecraft. The average collection rate of dust particles as a function of nucleo-centric distance shows that, at high phase angle, the dust flux follows a 1/ d 2 comet law, excluding fragmentation of the dust particles along their journey to the spacecraft. At low phase angle, the dust flux is much more dispersed compared to the 1/ d 2 comet law but cannot be explained by fragmentation of the particles along their trajectory since their velocity, indirectly deduced from the COSIMA data, does not support such a phenomenon. The cumulative size distribution of particles larger than 150 μ m follows a power law close to r − 0.8 ± 0.1 , confirming measurements made by another Rosetta dust instrument Grain Impact Analyser and Dust Accumulator (GIADA). The cumulative size distribution of particles between 30 μ m and 150 μ m has a power index of −1.9 ± 0.3. The excess of dust in the 10–100 μ mu2009 range in comparison to the 100 μ m–1 mm range together with no evidence for fragmentation in the inner coma, implies that these particles could have been released or fragmented at the nucleus right after lift-off of larger particles. Below 30 μ m, particles exhibit a flat size distribution. We interprete this knee in the size distribution at small sizes as the consequence of strong binding forces between the sub-constitutents. For aggregates smaller than 30 μ m, forces stronger than Van-der-Waals forces would be needed to break them apart.

COSIMA-Rosetta calibration for in-situ characterization of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko cometary inorganic compounds

COSIMA (COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser) is a time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometer (TOF-SIMS) on board the Rosetta space mission. COSIMA has been designed to measure the composition of cometary dust grains. It has a mass resolution m/{Delta}m of 1400 at mass 100 u, thus enabling the discrimination of inorganic mass peaks from organic ones in the mass spectra. We have evaluated the identification capabilities of the reference model of COSIMA for inorganic compounds using a suite of terrestrial minerals that are relevant for cometary science. Ground calibration demonstrated that the performances of the flight model were similar to that of the reference model. The list of minerals used in this study was chosen based on the mineralogy of meteorites, interplanetary dust particles and Stardust samples. It contains anhydrous and hydrous ferromagnesian silicates, refractory silicates and oxides (present in meteoritic Ca-Al-rich inclusions), carbonates, and Fe-Ni sulfides. From the analyses of these minerals, we have calculated relative sensitivity factors for a suite of major and minor elements in order to provide a basis for element quantification for the possible identification of major mineral classes present in the cometary grains.

Mechanical and electrostatic experiments with dust particles collected in the inner coma of comet 67P by COSIMA onboard Rosetta

The in situ cometary dust particle instrument COSIMA (COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser) onboard ESAs Rosetta mission has collected about 31u2009000 dust particles in the inner coma of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko since August 2014. The particles are identified by optical microscope imaging and analysed by time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry. After dust particle collection by low speed impact on metal targets, the collected particle morphology points towards four families of cometary dust particles. COSIMA is an in situ laboratory that operates remotely controlled next to the comet nucleus. The particles can be further manipulated within the instrument by mechanical and electrostatic means after their collection by impact. The particles are stored above 0°C in the instrument and the experiments are carried out on the refractory, ice-free matter of the captured cometary dust particles. An interesting particle morphology class, the compact particles, is not fragmented on impact. One of these particles was mechanically pressed and thereby crushed into large fragments. The particles are good electrical insulators and transform into rubble pile agglomerates by the application of an energetic indium ion beam during the secondary ion mass spectrometry analysis. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Cometary science after Rosetta’.

Evidence of sub-surface energy storage in comet 67P from the outburst of 2016 July 03

On 3 July 2016, several instruments on board ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft detected signs of an outburst event on comet 67P, at a heliocentric distance of 3.32 AU from the sun, outbound from perihelion. We here report on the inferred properties of the ejected dust and the surface change at the site of the outburst. The activity coincided with the local sunrise and continued over a time interval of 14 – 68 minutes. It left a 10m-sized icy patch on the surface. The ejected material comprised refractory grains of several hundred microns in size, and sub-micron-sized water ice grains. The high dust mass production rate is incompatible with the free sublimation of crystalline water ice under solar illumination as the only acceleration process. Additional energy stored near the surface must have increased the gas density. We suggest a pressurized sub-surface gas reservoir, or the crystallization of amorphous water ice as possible causes.