What do small bodies tell us about the formation of the Solar System and the conditions in the early solar nebula?

Abstract

The desire to know how our Solar System came to be is a fundamental driving force for humanity's exploration of space. "Building new worlds-understanding Solar System beginnings" is a major cross-cutting theme in the 2010 Planetary Science Decadal Survey. Drastically improving our understanding of Solar System formation also has synergy effects. It provides unique information on one past protostellar system that helps astrophysicists understand stellar formation and protoplanetary disks. It provides context that increases the scientific return of missions exploring the current properties of the Solar System. Exploration of small primitive bodies is the key to reveal the origin of the Solar System. We conclude that substantial progress in understanding the formation of our Solar System during the 2023-2032 decade requires: 1) sample return missions to a Jupiter Family comet (ideally cryogenic) and/or Trojan asteroid to access primitive and previously unexplored types of material; 2) probing the interior of undisrupted primitive bodies with orbiters and placing decades of remote-sensing spectral information into a concrete mineralogical context with landers; 3) multi-body flyby missions to poorly explored target groups to better understand the diversity of body shapes and composition.