Comets And Their Origin The Tools To Decipher A Comet

About this book

Divided into two parts, the first four chapters of Comets And Their Origin refer to comets and their formation in general, describing cometary missions, comet remote observations, astrochemistry, artificial comets, and the chirality phenomenon.

The second part covers the cometary Rosetta mission, its launch, journey, scientific objectives, and instrumentations, as well as the landing scenario on a cometary nucleus. Along the way, the author presents general questions concerning the origin of terrestrial water and the molecular beginnings of life on Earth, as well as how the instruments used on a space mission like Rosetta can help answer them. The text concludes with a chapter on what scientists expect from the Rosetta mission and how its data will influence our life on Earth.

As a result, the author elucidates highly topical and fascinating knowledge to scientists and students of various scientific backgrounds, allowing them to work with Rosetta's data.

Contents

Foreword Professor Michael F. A'Hearn
Foreword Professor Gerhard A. Schwehm
Preface

Part I Comets and Their Origin
1. Introduction
2. The Formation of Comets
3. Astrochemistry: Water and Organic Molecules in Comets
4. The Asymmetry of Life

Part II The Rosetta Mission – Rendezvous With a Comet
5. The Rosetta Cometary Mission: Launch and Target Comet
6. On the Way to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
7. Rosetta's Rendezvous With the Comet
8. Conclusions and Outlook

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Biography

Uwe J. Meierhenrich is full Professor of Chemistry and teaches at the University Nice Sophia Antipolis in France. Professor Meierhenrich studied chemistry at the Philipps University of Marburg, Germany. After completing his Ph.D. at the University of Bremen, he identified amino acids in artificial comets at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau and at the Centre de Biophysique Moléculaire in Orléans in preparation for the cometary Rosetta mission. Professor Meierhenrich is co-investigator of the cometary sampling and composition COSAC instrument onboard of Rosetta's lander Philae and his scientific research activities are dedicated to the chemistry of comets and the cometary mission Rosetta. He was awarded the Horst Pracejus Prize from the GDCh in 2011 for his work on chirality and enantioselective chromatography.