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Rosetta-Alice observations of exospheric hydrogen and oxygen on Mars

Parker, Joel Wm.; Bertaux, Jean-Loup; Weaver, Harold A. +9 more

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, en route to a 2014 encounter with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, made a gravity assist swing-by of Mars on 25 February 2007, closest approach being at 01:54 UT. The Alice instrument on board Rosetta, a lightweight far-ultraviolet imaging spectrograph optimized for in situ cometary spectroscopy in t…

Asteroid (21) Lutetia as a remnant of Earth’s precursor planetesimals

Jorda, L.; Lamy, P.; Groussin, O. +7 more

Isotopic and chemical compositions of meteorites, coupled with dynamical simulations, suggest that the main belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter contains objects formed in situ as well as a population of interlopers. These interlopers are predicted to include the building blocks of the terrestrial planets as well as objects that formed beyon…

Non-LTE radiative transfer for sub-millimeter water lines in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Kamp, Lucas; Gulkis, Samuel; Lee, Seungwon +2 more

The European Space Agency (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft (Schulz, R., Alexander, C., Boehnhardt, H., Glassmeier, K.H. (Eds.) [2009]. "ROSETTA - ESA") will encounter Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014 and spend the next 18 months in the vicinity of the comet, permitting very high spatial and spectral resolution observations of the coma and nucleus. …

Appearance of layered structures in numerical simulations of polydisperse bodies accretion: Application to cometary nuclei

Lasue, J.; Kofman, W.; Levasseur-Regourd, A. C. +2 more

A model for the aggregation of size distribution of cometesimals (Gaussian or power law) into cometary nuclei is developed. Upon disruption induced by collisions, sticking and evolution of the tensile strength and density of the cometesimals by sintering processes are taken into account. The resulting cometary nuclei present specific internal stru…