Organics in the Samples Returned by the Stardust Spacecraft from Comet 81P/Wild 2

摘要

Cometary organics are of great interest because these materials represent a reservoir of the original carbon-containing materials from which ev-erything else in our Solar System was made and that may have played key roles in the origin of life on Earth. These organics are products of a series of universal chemical processes expected to operate in all galaxies, so they also provide in-sights into the abundance of Life elsewhere in the universe. Our understanding of cometary organics has made a quantum leap forward due to the recent avail-ability of samples collected from Comet P81/Wild 2 and returned to the Earth by the Stardust mission.