Abstract
The long-awaited rendezvous of ROSETTA with its target Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is expected at best to give indirect evidence for cometary panspermia and the presence of microorganisms in comets.
Highlights
ROSETTA’s decade-long mission to Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko following its launch in 2004 is fast approaching its climax
The evidence of liferelated organic material in Comet Halley was dramatically displayed both in ground-based infrared spectra, and in mass spectroscopy carried by the Giotto spacecraft [1,2]
The idea of comets carrying bacteria and viruses is, still viewed with scepticism in orthodox circles; for this reason no explicit life detection experiment was included in the ROSETTA mission package
Summary
ROSETTA’s decade-long mission to Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko following its launch in 2004 is fast approaching its climax. Since the first space exploration of a comet – Comet Halley – in 1986 – an earlier entrenched paradigm of a ‘dirty ice comet’ has been gradually replaced by a class of model that is widely admitted to have a possible link to an origin of life on the Earth. The evidence of liferelated organic material in Comet Halley was dramatically displayed both in ground-based infrared spectra, and in mass spectroscopy carried by the Giotto spacecraft [1,2].
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