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Main Results from the ISSI International Team "Characterization of 67P Cometary Activity"

Longobardo, Andrea; Della Corte, Vincenzo; Fulle, Marco +8 more

The ESA/Rosetta mission accompanied the Jupiter Family Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and provided a huge amount of data which are providing important results about cometary activity mechanisms. We summarize the results obtained within the ISSI International Team Characterization of 67P cometary activity, which studied dust and gas ejection in di…

Formation of Comets

Blum, Jürgen; Gundlach, Bastian; Bischoff, Dorothea

Questions regarding how primordial or pristine the comets of the solar system are have been an ongoing controversy. In this review, we describe comets' physical evolution from dust and ice grains in the solar nebula to the contemporary small bodies in the outer solar system. This includes the phases of dust agglomeration, the formation of planetes…

Mechanical Properties of Cometary Surfaces

Vincent, Jean-Baptiste; Biele, Jens; Knollenberg, Jörg

Mechanical properties, in particular, strength (tensile, shear, compressive) and porosity, are important parameters for understanding the evolution and activity of comets. However, they are notoriously difficult to measure. Unfortunately, neither Deep Impact nor other comet observations prior to Rosetta provided firm data on the strength of cometa…

Blocks Size Frequency Distribution in the Enceladus Tiger Stripes Area: Implications on Their Formative Processes

Lucchetti, Alice; Pajola, Maurizio; Cremonese, Gabriele +1 more

We study the size frequency distribution of the blocks located in the deeply fractured, geologically active Enceladus South Polar Terrain with the aim to suggest their formative mechanisms. Through the Cassini ISS images, we identify ~17,000 blocks with sizes ranging from ~25 m to 366 m, and located at different distances from the Damascus, Baghda…