Meierhenrich U J, Thiemann W H, Rosenbauer H
Centre de Biophysique Moléculaire, Orleans, France.
Enantiomer. 2001;6(2-3):97-9.
At present the European Space Agency is working on one of its Cornerstone Missions, named "Rosetta", to be launched in January 2003 for a visit to comet 46P/Wirtanen2 in 2011. The Rosetta spacecraft will carry a small subsatellite, the Rosetta Lander3 (RoLand), to be detached from the orbiter and land on the surface of the comet's nucleus. One of our main scientific interests is to find out whether chiral organic compounds in cometary matter brought to the Earth by cometary impacts might have had, due to corresponding enantiomeric excesses, a seed function in determining the handedness which is characteristic of homochiral compounds employed by life on Earth. For this reason we have developed an Experiment for the ROSETTA mission, named Cometary Sampling and Composition Experiment (COSAC).
目前，欧洲航天局正在开展其基石任务之一，名为“罗塞塔”，计划于2003年1月发射，2011年访问46P/维尔特南彗星。罗塞塔号航天器将携带一颗小型子卫星——罗塞塔着陆器，从轨道器分离并降落在彗星核表面。我们的主要科学兴趣之一是弄清楚彗星撞击带到地球的彗星物质中的手性有机化合物，由于相应的对映体过量，是否可能在决定地球上生命所使用的同手性化合物特有的手性方面具有种子功能。出于这个原因，我们为罗塞塔任务开发了一个实验，名为彗星采样与成分实验（COSAC）。
