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Underground reservoir of oxygen in comet 67P

The Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko found unexpectedly high concentrations of molecular oxygen in its atmosphere. New results show that these concentrations are enhanced by a cycle of trapping and releasing of molecular oxygen just below the comet’s surface.

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Fig. 1: Different reservoirs of sublimating volatiles between perihelion and aphelion.

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Correspondence to Dennis Bodewits.

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Bodewits, D., Saki, M. Underground reservoir of oxygen in comet 67P. Nat Astron 6, 635–636 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01715-x

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