Our Sun and planetary system were born about 4.5 billion years ago. How did this happen,
and what is the nature of our heritage from these early times? This review tries to address …

In situ research of cometary chemistry began when measurements from the Giotto mission at
Comet 1P/Halley revealed the presence of complex organics in the coma. New telescopes …

Earth's water, intrinsic oxidation state and metal core density are fundamental chemical
features of our planet. Studies of exoplanets provide a useful context for elucidating the …

Water is a fundamental molecule in the star and planet formation process, essential for
catalysing the growth of solid material and the formation of planetesimals within disks …

The provenance of water and organic compounds on Earth and other terrestrial planets has
been discussed for a long time without reaching a consensus. One of the best means to …

There are still many open questions regarding the nature of Uranus and Neptune, the
outermost planets in the Solar System. In this review we summarize the current-knowledge …

Comets have three known reservoirs: the roughly spherical Oort Cloud (for long-period
comets), the flattened Kuiper Belt (for ecliptic comets), and, surprisingly, the asteroid belt (for …

The Solar System formed about 4.6 billion years ago from a condensation of matter inside a
molecular cloud. Trying to reconstruct what happened is the goal of this chapter. For that, we …

Asteroids and comets are the remnants of the swarm of planetesimals from which the
planets ultimately formed, and they retain records of processes that operated prior to and …

We present the analysis of≈ 100 molecular maps of the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-
Gerasimenko that were obtained with the MIRO submillimeter radiotelescope on board the …