Comet Emits Cosmic Stench, Rosetta Spacecraft Reveals

[Judi Lynn]

Comet Emits Cosmic Stench, Rosetta Spacecraft Reveals
by Kelly Dickerson | November 03, 2014 07:00am ET

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What does a comet smell like? A pungent cocktail of rotten eggs, horse pee and formaldehyde, apparently.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft caught up with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Aug. 6 and has been taking measurements of the icy object ever since. The Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis instrument, or ROSINA, has detected some pretty stinky fumes coming from the comet's coma, the fuzzy cloud around its core.

Comet 67P's rotten-egg smell comes from hydrogen sulfide, and the horse-stable odor comes from ammonia. These scents are blended with the fainter almond smell of hydrogen cyanide, the vinegarlike odor of sulphur dioxide and the sweet-smelling scent of carbon disulphide, researchers said.

"If you could smell the comet, you would probably wish that you hadn't," European Space Agency (ESA) officials wrote on the Rosetta spacecraft blog.

However, the density of these foul-smelling sources is low. The coma is mostly made of water and carbon dioxide mixed with carbon monoxide. Still, the rich chemical mix is surprising since the comet was still 250 million miles (400 million kilometers) from the sun when the observations were made.

More:
http://www.space.com/27607-comet-has-awful-stench-rosetta-spacecraft.html

[jakeXT]

1. That reminds me to finally watch the von Karman lecture on Rosetta

On October 9, as part of the Von Karman Lecture Series at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Manager of the US Rosetta Project, Art Chmielewski discussed comets and how they have inspired awe and wonder since the dawn of history. In November, the Rosetta spacecraft will attempt to become the first spacecraft to soft-land a robot on a comet – named 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The ten year Rosetta mission seeks to learn more about the origins of our universe by studying the comet.

although it's already 3 weeks old