Main Belt Comets as Clues to the Distribution of Water in the Early Solar System
Whitepaper #280 submitted to the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032. Topics: other: Missions; primitive bodies; solar system formation, dynamics processes, and chronology
by Karen Meech, Julie Castillo-Rogez, Mathieu Choukroun, Gianrico Filacchione, Olivier Hainaut, Henry Hsieh, Ted Bergin, Gary Huss, Jacqueline V. Keane, Jan Kleyna, Alice Lucchetti, Alessandro Morbidelli, Maurizio Pajola, Jian-Yang Li, Carol Raymond, and Sean Raymond
Published onMar 18, 2021
Main Belt Comets as Clues to the Distribution of Water in the Early Solar System
No one knows how water arrived at our planet. The answer is contained in volatiles unaltered since giant plant formation. MBCs are part of a population of icy asteroids residing in the outer asteroid belt that are significant reservoirs of primordial water and potentially other volatiles and are the ideal targets to address this science.
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