For the past several months the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft mission has been tailing the famous Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko with many answers at the core of its research. While in orbit the mission has been able to gather an immense amount of data, creating a never-before-seen view of comets as the first spacecraft to ever successfully orbit one in our history. Yet, many molecular ingredients that are thought to have given rise to comets have not been found.
Though the Rosetta spacecraft was successful in entering orbit and deploying its Philae lander to the surface of the comet, many technical errors and miscalculations have kept researchers and astronomers with the ESA from finding many of the true secrets that Comet 67P is hiding. But in a new release issued this week researchers reveal that they may have at the very least found what allows the frigid ball of ice and rock to maintain its low-temperature conditions, even while it's barreling for the Sun.
Looking to the comets as a proxy for the revealing the conditions that gave birth to our solar system, researchers with the ESA say that an important discovery was made this week when Rosetta discovered molecular nitrogen in the ice and rock of Comet 67P. Believed to have been a key ingredient in the origin of our solar system, researchers now believe that since the molecular nitrogen is in its ice form on the comet that it is indicative that the comet, and perhaps the entire solar system, formed under very low-temperature conditions.
"Its detection is particularly important since molecular nitrogen is thought to have been the most common type of nitrogen available when the solar system was forming" spokespersons with the ESA say. "In the colder outer regions, it likely provided the main source of nitrogen that was incorporated into the gas planets."
"It also dominates the dense atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan and is present in the atmospheres and surface ices on Pluto and [on] Neptune's moon Triton."
Publishing their results in the journal Science, the researchers say that the ice on Comet 67P could have trapped the molecular nitrogen at a temperature of minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit, which would not be too far-fetched considering that the comet formed in the same region of space as Triton and Pluto, but still would indicate that perhaps other planets formed under these below freezing temperatures as well.
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