Meteor showers are generated when Earth plows through streams of debris shed by comets on their path around the sun.
The new instrument is equipped with special filters which will enable astronomers to study regularly and in detail the ejection of several types of molecules by comets during their journey around the Sun.
In its journey through space, Earth is bombarded by a hailstorm of comets, meteors and asteroids.
We're talking about frozen carbon dioxide, frozen other kinds of gases, but also water ice, and it's thought by most astronomers now that, originally, comets contributed a huge amount of water to Earth and a lot of what is now in our ocean.
"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.
Short-period comets have their short periods precisely because of their interactions with closer-by planets, which are already known to astronomers.
This would make sense if short-period comets started off in the Kuiper belt and were nudged into closer orbits around the sun by the gravity of the most distant of the giant planets, Neptune.
Two researchers (separated by the Atlantic ocean, rather than the English Channel), have used gravitational perturbations that affect comets, rather than planets, to predict the existence of something that might be a planet, or might be a star depending mainly on how you define a planet or a star.
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.
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