The Rosetta spacecraft has detected water coming off comet 67P, the rubber duck-shaped lump of ice and dust that it placed the Philae robotic lander on last month.
The presence of water is not a surprise, but what has wrong-footed researchers is the makeup of the water, which is nothing like that seen on Earth.
Measurements from Rosetta’s Rosina instrument found that water on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko contains about three times more deuterium — a heavy form of hydrogen — than water on Earth.
The discovery seems to overturn the theory that Earth got its water — and so its ability to harbor life — from water-bearing comets that slammed into the planet during its early history.
Comet 67P is thought to have come from what is called the Kuiper belt, a broad band of frozen bodies that begins beyond the orbit of Neptune. The main asteroid belt contains more rocky objects that circle the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Kathrin Altwegg at the University of Bern in Switzeralnd said that rather than comets ferrying water to Earth, it may have arrived onboard asteroids instead. Details of the discovery are reported in the journal Science.
“Today, asteroids have very limited water, that’s clear, but that was probably not always the case, Altwegg said.
In the earliest period of the solar system 3.8 billion years ago, asteroids are thought to have crashed into Earth regularly in what is called the late heavy bombardment.
“At that time, asteroids could well have had much more water than they have today,” Altwegg said.
The Rosina instrument measured water coming off the comet as it flew around the body. Scientists plan to take more measurements as the comet nears the Sun and its begins to spew more water vapor and dust out into space.
Measurements from other comets have found water with similar deuterium contents to that on Earth, but the strange composition of comet 67P’s water suggests that the picture of comets bringing water to Earth is too simplistic.
Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor said that teams at the European Space Agency were still looking for the Philae lander, which ran out of power soon after it bounced down onto the comet’s surface.
If Philae can summon enough power from the feeble sunlight to come out of hibernation, a British instrument called Ptolemy could help to verify the accuracy of the water measurements from Rosetta.
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