Colliding asteroids and comets would have delivered plenty of organic matter.
Observatories around the world send their findings to the NASA-funded Minor Planet Center, which keeps a database of all known asteroids and comets in our solar system.
The NASA Near Earth Objects (NEO) Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington, manages and funds the search, study, and monitoring of NEOs, or asteroids and comets, whose orbits periodically bring them close to the Earth.
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How are asteroids and comets formed?
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Data from NEAR could help answer questions about the origin and composition of asteroids, comets and the solar system, according to the mission managers at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
Together, he and Carolyn discovered 32 comets and several hundred asteroids.
Asteroids and meteorites, along with comets, are regarded as left-overs from the raw ingredients of the early solar system, uncooked by any planet-forming processes.
In its journey through space, Earth is bombarded by a hailstorm of comets, meteors and asteroids.
"The guess is that both the water and the dark material, which we think is organic-rich material, were delivered by the same objects impacting Mercury: some mixture of comets and the kinds of asteroids that are rich in organic and volatile material like water ice, " Prof Solomon said.
There's an important distinction between these two types of objects: Comets are mostly water, ice and dust, while asteroids are mostly rock or metal.
Most asteroids are made of rock, while comets can be a mixture of rock, organic molecules and frozen gases.
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