The comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (pictured), which has been orbited by the Rosetta spacecraft since 2014, might date back to the primordial Solar System billions of years ago.
A team led by Björn Davidsson at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, used instruments on the European Space Agency's spacecraft to examine the structure of the comet's core. The porous consistency of 67P shows that it did not form through violent collisions. Instead, the authors propose that the comet was made gradually, when icy pebbles from the outer reaches of the developing Solar System clumped together. The two lobes of 67P may have gently joined together during the final stages of the comet's formation.
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Gentle birth of a comet. Nature 536, 128 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/536128a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/536128a
