The “issue” of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society for September is posted. In it:
Volume 542, Issue 1
Kleshchonok, V. Sierks, H. Güttler, C. Inner coma of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko during increased activity at perihelion on 2015 August 22–23 Pgs 241 staf1077
Volume 542, Issue 2
Deskins, T. K. Bodewits, D. Bromley, S. et al. Modelling solar-wind charge-exchange processes using NICER X-ray observations of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko: addressing… Pgs 1616 staf1297
Volume 542, Issue 3
Grébol-Tomás, P. Peña-Asensio, E. Trigo-Rodríguez, J. M. et al. On the spatiotemporal coincidence of meteorites in recent fall search campaigns Pgs 1743 staf1296
On the one hand, the Rosetta/Philae mission at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko left many questions unanswered (and raised some new ones). On the other hand, “Chury” is now (by default) the best-studied comet ever, and a touchstone (literally and metaphorically) for all other comets. We owe it to ourselves (and the taxpayers) to wring every last possible bit of science from Rosetta’s downlink signal. Kleshchonok et al. take a comet “outburst” (such as it was) as one example of comet activity, which was one of the mission priorities that was left hanging.
Not left was fields and particle studies, including heliophysics. The Rosetta operations managers traversed the coma and heliosheath multiple times, directly sampling the rarefied plasma (from both the comet itself, the solar wind, and their interaction). With the mission’s in situ data as a reference, we can better interpret remote sensing data- from, e. g., the NICER X-ray telescope in Earth orbit. Two points of view cross-calibrate each other, and calibrate views of other comets as well.
Unrelated: we take meteorites to be samples of, mainly, asteroids, and potentially comets too. Some meteorites split or explode when entering Earth’s atmosphere, and land in a spray pattern (“strewnfield”). If the original meteor was current and witnessed (a “fall”), it’s a fair assumption that the space rocks found in the strewnfield were once a single meteoroid (they were “paired”, including more than two specimens). But if the meteor was never seen (possibly because it was prehistoric)- a “find”, and humans simply come across several meteorites, it’s presumptuous of us to assume pairing. Grébol-Tomás make that presumption explicit: on any area of ground, there’s some probability a meteorite is there by pure chance. Should a new meteorite enter onto that area, they might look paired, but the odds of two- separate and unrelated- meteorites are not zero at all. Further testing should be done.