RESEARCH

摘要

Since August 2014, the Rosetta spacecraft has been orbiting comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rita Schulz et al. present initial results from Rosetta's COSIMA instrument, which is collecting cometary dust grains for optical and compositional analysis. The authors describe grains derived from the dusty crust that quenches material outflow at the comet surface. The larger grains are fluffy and many have shattered on the collection plate, suggesting that they are agglomerates of interplanetary dust particles.