“Rosetta” Water on the comet 67P differs from the earth – BBC Russian

• December 11, 2014

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Comet increasingly emits jets of steam as it approaches the Sun

An analysis of the results obtained from spacecraft “Rosetta”, in orbit around the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, showed that the water in the comet is very different isotopic composition of the Earth’s .

This is a serious blow to the theory that the water on Earth is primarily cometary origin.

The authors of the article published in the journal Science, believe that the water was brought to Earth falling asteroids early formation of the solar system. However, other scholars have pointed out that the role of comets in this process remains unclear.

Two of the mass spectrometer on board the “Rosetta”, which analyzes the composition of flows of water vapor emitted by the comet, shown in the last two weeks that the isotopic composition these vapors is very different from the composition of the Earth’s water. Deuterium content in the cometary water vapor is much higher than the earth parameters.

The preceding observations also indicate that the water in comets originating from the Oort cloud – a remote area on the edge of the solar system – have a different isotopic composition than Earth’s water.

However, only two comets from the Kuiper Belt, which also focuses cometary material were analyzed for isotopic composition – a comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) and comet Hartley 2. Kuiper belt lies between the orbits of Neptune and Uranus.

Интересно, that observations with orbital telescope “Herschel” indicate that the comet Hartley 2 contains water, which corresponds exactly to the Earth’s at its isotopic composition.

The probe “Rosetta” will continue to collect data about the comet, following her on motion path to the Sun during 2015. In addition, there remains the possibility that the lander “Fila” remains on the surface of the comet and off due to lack of solar energy, will come to life at the approach to the Sun and send new measurement results.

If you want to imagine clearly that such a probe “Rosetta” and its lander, you can play in our interactive game.