What smells like comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko?

Since August, the Rosetta interplanetary station (Rosetta) has been using scientific tools, including ROSINA (Rosetta Orbiter Sensor for Ion and Neutral Analysis) to determine the chemical composition of gases emerging from comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Despite the fact that the comet is still at a distance of 400 million kilometers from the Sun, gases come out of the nucleus quite actively. At the same time, scientists are surprised by the diversity of the chemical composition of gaseous substances, which were analyzed by Rosetta.
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Previously it was thought that carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide) and carbon monoxide (carbon monoxide, CO) would be most actively evaporated. But ROSINA caught a lot more chemicals. September 11 were found:

• Water;
• Carbon monoxide;
• Carbon dioxide;
• Ammonia (NH3);
• Methane (CH4);
• Methanol (CH3OH).

Now found and such substances as:

• Formaldehyde (CH2O);
• Hydrogen sulfide (H2S);
• Hydrocyanic acid (HCN);
• Sulfur dioxide (SO2);
• Carbon disulfide (CS2).

If one of us would catch the smell of a comet, under normal conditions, the first desire would never be to sniff IT.

The smells emanating from the comet - the smell of rotten eggs (hydrogen sulfide), "aroma", similar to the smell of vinegar from sulfur dioxide, horse sweat (ammonia), the scent of formaldehyde and the smell of almond (from hydrocyanic acid, which, by the way, is extremely poisonous) .

True, now the concentrations of all these substances are still very low, now the highest concentrations of water and carbon dioxide with carbon monoxide.

The key objective of the current set of analyzes is to determine the composition of the comet. Further work will show how the composition of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko is similar to the composition of other comets. This will help to know the primary composition of the near-solar nebula, from which, according to the accepted theory, the whole Solar system was formed and life arose.

Via esa