An article just published in the journal “Nature” describes the discovery of oxygen molecules in the coma of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It’s a surprising discovery, and in fact is the first time that this presence is detected in a comet because molecular oxygen is very reactive so it tends to combine for example with hydrogen to form water. This oxygen is a “survivor” from the time of formation of the solar system.

At the European Planetary Science Congress going on these days in Nantes, France, evidence were presented that the strange shape of the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is due to the fact that it was born from the merger of two small comets occurred a few billion years ago. The study conducted by a team led by Matteo Massironi, a researcher at the University of Padua and Italian INAF (National Institute of Astrophysics) associate, was published in the journal “Nature”.

An article just published in the journal “Nature” describes a research on the daily water-ice cycle on the surface of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and its vicinity. A team of scientists led by Maria Cristina De Sanctis from Rome’s IAPS-INAF (National Institute of Astrophysics – Institute for Astrophysics and Space Planetology) analyzed data collected by the ESA’s Rosetta space probe’s VIRTIS spectrometer discovering that in some areas the ice water disappears in the day and reappears in the night.

While the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko started moving away from the Sun, new studies have been published based on data collected over the past months. An article published in the journal “Geophysical Research Letters” describes the exam of the many fractures photographed after the arrival of ESA’s space probe Rosetta. Another article published in the journal “Annales Geophysicae” provides an explanation for the “song” of the comet discovered last year.