The origin of interstellar asteroidal objects like 1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua

Asteroidal impacts and the origin of terrestrial and lunar volatiles

a Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, University de Lyon 1, CNRS, Lyon, France Department of Earth Science, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA c Steinmann Institut, Universität Bonn, 53115 Bonn, Germany Centre de Recherches Petrographiques et Géochimiques, CNRS, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Géologie, 54501 Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy, France Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA Departme...

The origin and evolution of interstellar organics

Over the last decade, we have made great strides in better understanding dust composition and evolution in dense clouds and the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM). Thanks to improvements in IR detector sensitivity on ground-based telescopes and the Spitzer Space Telescope mission, we are no longer limited to a handful of bright background stars in order to study dust composition in quiescent den...

An asteroidal origin for water in the Moon

The Apollo-derived tenet of an anhydrous Moon has been contested following measurement of water in several lunar samples that require water to be present in the lunar interior. However, significant uncertainties exist regarding the flux, sources and timing of water delivery to the Moon. Here we address those fundamental issues by constraining the mass of water accreted to the Moon and modelling...

Precursors to Interstellar Shocks of Solar Origin

On or about 2012 August 25, the Voyager 1 spacecraft crossed the heliopause into the nearby interstellar plasma. In the nearly three years that the spacecraft has been in interstellar space, three notable particle and field disturbances have been observed, each apparently associated with a shock wave propagating outward from the Sun. Here, we present a detailed analysis of the third and most im...

On the origin of objects