John Bridges

TL;DR: The Stardust spacecraft collected thousands of particles from comet 81P/Wild 2 and returned them to Earth for laboratory study, and preliminary examination shows that the nonvolatile portion of the comet is an unequilibrated assortment of materials that have both presolar and solar system origin.

TL;DR: The bulk of the comet 81P/Wild 2 samples returned to Earth by the Stardust spacecraft appear to be weakly constructed mixtures of nanometer-scale grains, with occasional much larger ferromagnesian silicates, Fe-Ni sulfides,Fe-Ni metal, and accessory phases.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors report detection of background levels of atmospheric methane of mean value 0.69 ± 0.25 ppbv at the 95% confidence interval (CI).

TL;DR: The second ExoMars mission will be launched in 2020 to target an ancient location interpreted to have strong potential for past habitability and for preserving physical and chemical biosignatures (as well as abiotic/prebiotic organics).

TL;DR: Higher abundances of chlorinated hydrocarbons in the mudstone compared with Rocknest windblown materials previously analyzed by Curiosity suggest that indigenous martian or meteoritic organic carbon sources may be preserved in the Mudstone; however, the carbon source for the chlorinatedHydrocarbons is not definitively of martian origin.