Kathleen Mandt, PhD
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mommascientist.bsky.social
Kathleen Mandt, PhD
@mommascientist.bsky.social
2.4K followers 510 following 120 posts
Planetary scientist and Yorkie Mom. Exploring the solar system. Opinions are my own.
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mommascientist.bsky.social
Would you be able to follow me so I can DM you?
June 23, 2025 at 5:47 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
Thread was broken. Here is the #ASLStream bsky.app/profile/momm...
June 23, 2025 at 4:01 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
And that's it! The most important takeaway I would like everyone to remember is how important robotic space missions are. These spacecraft go where no humans can travel and discover things we can't learn from Earth-based observations #NASA #ESA #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭
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June 23, 2025 at 3:58 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
Also, here is the #ASLstream of my talk for those who are interested. #NASA #ESA #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭 www.youtube.com/live/VDpyzls...
ASL STREAM-The Origin of Earth's Oceans (Exploring Space Lecture Series)
YouTube video by Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
www.youtube.com
June 23, 2025 at 3:57 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
Which leads to my team's results that are explained here
#PlanetaryScience 🪐🧪🔭 🧵17/x bsky.app/profile/momm...
mommascientist.bsky.social Kathleen Mandt, PhD @mommascientist.bsky.social · Nov 15
🚨🚨New paper alert!! 🚨🚨🧪🔭
Today we published exciting new results from the Rosetta mission! These results have big implications for where the comet formed and for whether comets could have supplied water to Earth. #PlanetaryScience #Rosetta 🧵1/n
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
A nearly terrestrial D/H for comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Analysis of Rosetta measurements suggests that Jupiter family comets could have delivered much of Earth’s water.
www.science.org
June 23, 2025 at 3:51 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
Another big surprise was how high D/H was. It didn't match the amount of CO and N2 in the comet or other Jupiter Family Comets #PlanetaryScience 🪐🧪🔭 🧵16/x bsky.app/profile/momm...
mommascientist.bsky.social Kathleen Mandt, PhD @mommascientist.bsky.social · Nov 15
The first results from Rosetta had a really high D/H that required 67P to form far away from the Sun. This was confusing! #67P is different from other Jupiter family comets that have lower D/H ratios. It also didn't have a lot of CO and N2 ice, which form at really cold temperatures too.🧪🔭🧵5/n
a close up of a woman 's face with a triangle and a mathematical equation on it .
Alt: a close up of a woman 's face with a triangle and a mathematical equation on it .
media.tenor.com
June 23, 2025 at 3:50 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
Robotic space science missions are also an adventure and are sometimes scary. The spacecraft used star trackers to check its pointing. When the comet was really active we flew too close. Ice-covered dust confused the spacecraft and made it shut down. We had to replan! #PlanetaryScience 🪐🧪🔭 🧵15/x
Image showing what the star trackers saw when the spacecraft was surrounded by ice-covered dust lit up by the Sun. It's impossible to tell which dots are stars and which are dust.
June 23, 2025 at 3:48 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
Robotic space science missions are amazing!!! The second surprise Rosetta provided was to show that the activity is complicated. We expected to see gas sublimating from the surface lifting dust to make a coma but also found jets bursting out of the surface #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭🦆 🧵14/x
Three Rosetta camera images taken 7 seconds apart. The middle image shows a jet coming from the nucleus but the jet does not appear in the other two.
June 23, 2025 at 3:43 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
The first big surprise was what the comet actually looked like #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭🦆 🧵13/x
Rosetta navigation camera images of the comet when the spacecraft was approaching. The shape looks more like a duck than the diamond shape predicted by Hubble. A rubber ducky is overlaid on one of the images.
June 23, 2025 at 3:40 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
Although they take a long time to get there, robotic space missions can go where humans aren't able to go and make surprising discoveries. Rosetta made many discoveries! Below is the image of what we expected to see based on #Hubble images of the comet #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭 🧵12/x
Images of comet nucleus taken from Hubble Space Telescope before Rosetta arrived.
June 23, 2025 at 3:38 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
Outer planet missions, or robotic spacecraft going farther away from Earth than Mars, take a long time to get to their targets. Rosetta took ten years to reach the comet and had to "hibernate" on the way there #ExplorationIsHard #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭 🧵11/x
www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
Rosetta
Follow Europe's comet chaser Rosetta on ESA's official website, where you can find the latest news, images and animations on the spacecraft and its lander Philae.Rosetta will rendezvous with comet 67P...
www.esa.int
June 23, 2025 at 3:35 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
International cooperation is vital for space exploration. #Rosetta was a European-led mission that #NASA contributed three instruments to and provided components to the ROSINA instrument that would measure D/H in water. #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭 🧵10/x
Slide showing an image of the Rosetta spacecraft and three instruments that are part of the ROSINA instrument suite. Title: The ROSINA instrument was designed to "sniff" the cometary gases.
June 23, 2025 at 3:32 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
We still don't know if Earth's water came mostly from comets or asteroids. Enter the #ESA #Rosetta mission, named after the Rosetta stone and designed to decode the history of the solar system using a comet as a time capsule. #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭 🧵9/x
www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
June 23, 2025 at 3:29 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
Most of Earth's water came from the asteroids and comets that impacted Earth. This happened after the giant planets formed and then moved around to new locations. Giant planet migration caused leftover "debris" to scatter inward and hit the Earth. #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭 🧵8/x
Image created by NASA & JPL illustrating an object impacting the early Earth.
June 23, 2025 at 3:25 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
The D/H in Earth's water is the result of a combination of three sources: (1) water adsorbed by rocks when Earth formed inside the ice line, (2) water from asteroids and and (3) comets that impacted Earth. #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭 🧵7/x
Slide from lecture with the cross-section figure from previous post (Source: https://alma-maps.info/overview.html). Title "Earth adsorbed some water while forming." Text pointing to regions of nebula: "Earth formed inside the water ice line adsorbing small amounts of water. Asteroids and comets formed outside the water ice line. Some comets formed outside the CO line." Subtext: "Although Earth adsorbed some water while it formed, this is not enough water to explain our oceans."
June 23, 2025 at 3:23 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
I explained in a thread about a recent paper how water has a "fingerprint" that tells us whether water ice in the Protosolar Nebula formed in warm or cold conditions: D/H. We measure this in planetary "debris" to look back in time. #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭 🧵6/x bsky.app/profile/momm...
mommascientist.bsky.social Kathleen Mandt, PhD @mommascientist.bsky.social · Nov 15
Comets are made up of dust and water ice. One of the most valuable measurements we make in a comet is the amount of deuterium (D) compared to hydrogen (H) in the water, D/H. The D/H in water tells us at what temperature ice formed, and from that how far a comet formed from the Sun. 🔭🧪🧵4/n
Plot of D/H and nitrogen isotope measurements for different bodies in the solar system. The higher the D/H the lower the temperature for water ice formation. Saturn, Jupiter, the Sun, and the Ice Giants all have the lowest D/H. Chondrites (from asteroids) have a middle value and comets range from middle to high. Illustration of the influence that the heat from the newly formed Sun has on water in the nebula when the planets were forming (from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103513000377)
June 23, 2025 at 3:12 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
We know that the temperature in the Protosolar Nebula became colder with increasing distance from the Sun. Inside of the water ice line, water was a vapor but formed solid ice outside of this line. Much farther out was a carbon monoxide (CO) ice line #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭 🧵5/x
Graphic illustrating a cross-section of the protosolar nebula showing how the temperature decreased with distance. The water and CO ice lines are also indicated. Source: https://alma-maps.info/overview.html
June 23, 2025 at 3:09 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
Of course we can't go back in time to when the solar system formed or watch Earth form in our planet-forming disk, the Protosolar Nebula. Instead we use telescopes to look at other disks and take measurements from "debris" left over when our planets formed #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭 🧵4/x
Slide from my talk with graphic from NASA Space Place video about how our solar system came to be (link in previous post). Slide says "Turning back the clock. We use measurements made in today's solar system to understand past events."
June 23, 2025 at 3:05 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
To figure out how Earth got its oceans, we look back in time to when the solar system formed. #NASA has a great video about this as par of our amazing science education and outreach websites. #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭
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plus.nasa.gov/video/space-...
Space Place in a Snap: The Solar System’s Formation
In this episode, find out how our solar system formed and how it came to be the busy place it is today.
plus.nasa.gov
June 23, 2025 at 3:01 PM
mommascientist.bsky.social
After visiting #OceanWorlds in the outer solar system, #Mars, and #Venus, I got to bring everyone home to #Earth. Earth is very special because it's the only place, after decades of searching, where we know #life exists. We have life thanks to our #Oceans. #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology 🪐🧪🔭
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Introductory slide for my talk showing an image of Earth's oceans from space. The text says "Meet Earth. This is the only planet we know that hosts life. Earthlike life exists because of water. How did the Earth get its water?"
June 23, 2025 at 2:58 PM