Rosetta’s spacecraft, created by Europe, recently discovered molecular nitrogen while in orbit around a comet. This discovery is a great achievement because molecular nitrogen existing on comets can answer the question of what the conditions were like when the solar system was born and points to the comet forming in a cooler area of our universe. This discovery also implies that comets, planets, and moons all formed in the same general area because analysis show that nitrogen also exist on planets and moons.
Rosetta Spacecraft. Image Obtained from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Rosetta_spacecraft_(black_bg).png
The discovery of nitrogen on a comet has been discovered before, but never in the form of molecular nitrogen and in the manner of presenting itself. However, the ratio between nitrogen and carbon monoxide was not what to be expected and leaves scientist figuring it couldn’t have formed in the early stages of the solar system. Scientist say what could address the low ratio is that the molecular nitrogen could have had the possibility of being trapped in ice, thus pointing to the comet to be around the same area in our solar system as Neptune and Pluto.
The Daily Orbit 