Isotopic compositions of cometary matter returned by Stardust

McKeegan, Kevin D.; Aleon, Jerome; Bradley, John; Brownlee, Donald; Busemann, Henner; Butterworth, Anna; Chaussidon, Marc; Fallon, Stewart; Floss, Christine; Gilmour, Jamie; Gounelle, Matthieu; Graham, Giles; Guan, Yunbin; Heck, Philipp R.; Hoppe, Peter; Hutcheon, Ian D.; Huth, Joachim; Ishii, Hope; Ito, Motoo; Jacobsen, Stein B.; Kearsley, Anton; Leshin, Laurie A.; Liu, Ming-Chang; Lyon, Ian; Marhas, Kuljeet; Marty, Bernard; Matrajt, Graciela; Meibom, Anders; Messenger, Scott; Mostefaoui, Smail; Mukhopadhyay, Sujoy; Nakamura-Messenger, Keiko; Nittler, Larry; Palma, Russ; Pepin, Robert O.; Papanastassiou, Dimitri A.; Robert, Francois; Schlutter, Dennis; Snead, Christopher J.; Stadermann, Frank J.; Stroud, Rhonda; Tsou, Peter; Westphal, Andrew; Young, Edward D.; Ziegler, Karen; Zimmermann, Laurent; Zinner, Ernst
2006
SCIENCE
DOI
10.1126/science.1135992
Hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen isotopic compositions are heterogeneous among comet 81P/Wild 2 particle fragments; however, extreme isotopic anomalies are rare, indicating that the comet is not a pristine aggregate of presolar materials. Nonterrestrial nitrogen and neon isotope ratios suggest that indigenous organic matter and highly volatile materials were successfully collected. Except for a single O-17-enriched circumstellar stardust grain, silicate and oxide minerals have oxygen isotopic compositions consistent with solar system origin. One refractory grain is O-16-enriched, like refractory inclusions in meteorites, suggesting that Wild 2 contains material formed at high temperature in the inner solar system and transported to the Kuiper belt before comet accretion.