Murthy S. Gudipati (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena)

The ESA/NASA Rosetta Mission Science: Comets and the Origin of Life on Earth

Az előadás kivonata: Origin of Life on Earth is an outstanding Puzzle for Humanity. One of the many theories of the Origin of Life, is that about 4 billion years ago, asteroids and comets bombarded Earth delivering the precursors of life and triggered the chemical evolution of Life on Earth. These intriguing celestial bodies are thought to be the most primitive objects in our Solar System.

Present-day comets originate from the Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) or Oort Cloud, which are the left-over small bodies during the star and planet formation process in our solar system. These small bodies are also understood to be unfractionated careers of primordial material from interstellar space. Comet and asteroid bombardments on Earth during the Late Heavy Bombardment time (ca. 4 billion years ago) could have brought the material and conditions needed to trigger life on Earth soon thereafter. ESA/NASA collaborative ROSETTA mission to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko provided outstanding data about a short-period Jupiter-family comet. Many complex organic molecules that are important for life, including an amino acid Glycine, have been detected outgassing from this comet that are also reproduced from laboratory measurements. This presentation will discuss some of the exciting scientific discoveries on comets, and how laboratory investigations and space missions help us to address the puzzle of the “Origin of Life on Earth”.

Acknowledgment: This work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Funding from NASA through DDAP, HW, NFDAP, SSW, and XRP programs is acknowledged.

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