Cometary nuclei contain the least modified material from the formative epoch of our
planetary system, and their compositions reflect a range of processes experienced by …

Silicate dust particles are an important player in the cosmic life cycle of matter. They have
been detected in a wide variety of environments, ranging from nearby protoplanetary disks …

Some active asteroids have been proposed to be formed as a result of impact events.
Because active asteroids are generally discovered by chance only after their tails have fully …

Little is known about the origin of the spectral diversity of asteroids and what it says about
conditions in the protoplanetary disk. Here, we show that samples returned from Cb-type …

Some asteroids eject dust, unexpectedly producing transient, comet-like comae and tails.
First ascribed to the sublimation of near-surface water ice, mass-losing asteroids (also …

Aims. Photodissociation by UV light is an important destruction mechanism for carbon
monoxide (CO) in many astrophysical environments, ranging from interstellar clouds to …

The Stardust spacecraft collected thousands of particles from comet 81P/Wild 2 and returned
them to Earth for laboratory study. The preliminary examination of these samples shows that …

The zodiacal cloud is a thick circumsolar disk of small debris particles produced by asteroid
collisions and comets. Their relative contribution and how particles of different sizes …

The bulk of the comet 81P/Wild 2 (hereafter Wild 2) samples returned to Earth by the
Stardust spacecraft appear to be weakly constructed mixtures of nanometer-scale grains …

Context. We investigate the formation and evolution of comet nuclei and other trans-
Neptunian objects (TNOs) in the solar nebula and primordial disk prior to the giant planet …