Philae data suggests the presence of building blocks of life on comet

The scientists involved in the Rosetta mission got a little worried when the Philae lander bounced off the surface of the comet 67P/ Chuymov-Gerasimenko. However, the fall turned out to be a bit lucky for the lander as now it will allow the scientists to take measurements in two separate spots instead of one. Rosetta is a robotic space probe built and launched by the European Space Agency along with Philae which acts as the lander. Rosetta was launched on March 2 2004 from the Guiana Space Centre and in 2014 it made its first successful landing on the surface of the comet.

Image Source: tjcnewspaper.com

Since then the probe has been sending back the images and other information about the comet to the researchers back home. A number of papers have already been published by the scientists that sketch out the comet’s physical and chemical profile. A few things that have been mentioned in these papers are; one spot of the comet is covered in fluffy, clumpy sediments and the others are caked in hard crust, the comet’s head is porous but fairly uniform in composition and that there are a number of organic molecules including four that have never been detected on a comet before.

This mission has opened up a lot possibilities and has provided a lot of insight into the composition and behavior of a comet in deep space, things which were previously unknown. The recent updates indicate that Philae has in fact, found the building blocks of life during its mission. The mission objectives were to collect samples of air and surface. The analysis of the air samples by the Ptolemy instrument has shown the presence of water vapor, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide with smaller amounts of formaldehyde. The nitrogen rich compounds are ingredients in building blocks of life including amino acids and nucleo bases that are a part of DNA.

A lead lander scientist, Jean-Pierre Bibring, said,” Taken together, these first pioneering measurements on the surface of a comet are profoundly changing our view of these worlds and continuing to shape our impression of the history of the solar system.” The comets are known to be remnants of the solar system formation process which took place more than four billion years ago and the data from Philae has only provided scientists with more insight in the working and formation of these comets.