Abstract
Here we review some of the major findings of the mass spectrometer suite ROSINA on board of ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. For more than 2 years, ROSINA continuously measured the composition of the gases sublimating from the comet’s nucleus. ROSINA measurements provided insight into the origin of the ices in 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The obtained molecular, elemental, and isotope abundances revealed a composition more complex than previously known. Furthermore, a subset of these measurements indicate that a substantial fraction of the molecules incorporated into the comet predate the formation of the solar system.
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Acknowledgements
The work of the many engineers, technicians and scientists involved in the Rosetta mission and in the ROSINA instrument in particular is gratefully acknowledged. Without their contributions, ROSINA would not have produced such outstanding results. Rosetta was an ESA mission with contributions from its member states and NASA. Work on this paper at the University of Bern was funded by the Canton of Bern and the Swiss National Science Foundation (200020_207312).
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Rubin, M. (2023). Insight into the Origin of Cometary Ices from Rosetta/ROSINA Mass Spectrometer Data. In: Mennella, V., Joblin, C. (eds) European Conference on Laboratory Astrophysics ECLA2020. ECLA 2021. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, vol 59. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29003-9_30
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