Past and Future Comet Missions

Abstract

We review the history of spacecraft encounters with comets, concentrating on those that took place in the recent past, since the publication of the Comets II book. This includes the flyby missions Stardust and Deep Impact, and their respective extended missions, the Rosetta rendezvous mission, and serendipitous encounters. While results from all of these missions can be found throughout this book, this chapter focuses on the questions that motivated each mission, the technologies that were required to answer these questions, and where each mission opened new areas to investigate. There remain a large number of questions that will require future technologies and space missions to answer; we also describe planned next steps and routes forward that may be pursued by missions that have yet to be selected, and eventually lead to cryogenic sample return of nucleus ices for laboratory study.

The Return of the Rosetta Target: Keck Near-infrared Observations of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in 2021

“…The link between comets and planetary system formation has been the main motivation for extensive studies of these objects via both remote sensing and spacecraft missions (Bauer et al 2023;Biver et al 2023a;Knight et al 2023;Snodgrass et al 2023). The target of our observations, comet 67P/C-G, is a short-period (6.4 yr) JFC that has a special significance because it was explored in unprecedented detail by the ESA Rosetta mission (2014)(2015)(2016).…”