The traditional view of minor bodies in the (inner) Solar System is that they are split into icy comets and rocky asteroids. However this has been challenged by recent results, such as the discovery of comets on asteroidal orbits in the outer asteroid belt (between Mars and Jupiter) and the detection of water ice frost on the surface of asteroid (24) Themis. The discovery of water ice on the surface of asteroids has profound implications for how the Solar System formed, and challenges our ideas about the stability of ice in the inner Solar System. The study of volatiles in the asteroid belt places strong constraints on the temperature and composition distribution in the proto-planetary disk,and on possible sources of terrestrial water, and strongly constrains formation models of the early Solar System.
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