Report: Exploring Organic Environments in the Solar System
Task Group on Organic Environments in the Solar System, National Research Council
The purpose of this report is to tell the story of carbon: to follow carbon through a variety of terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments, to track its changes as it is subjected to a variety of physical and chemical processes, and to attempt to convey what the study of carbon and its compounds tells us about the origin and evolution of the solar system.
In particular, the Task Group on Organic Environments in the Solar System surveys what is known about the sources of reduced carbon compounds throughout the solar system and examines how planetary exploration can improve our understanding. It is not the purpose of this report to recommend expensive new research activities and propose costly new initiatives. Rather, the task group’s goal is to place a variety of disparate activities in a unified context.
