Editorial: Insight from the unexpected

Abstract

The NASA Stardust mission returned samples from comet 81P/Wild 2, an active Jupiter-family comet that is believed to have formed at a heliocentric distance beyond the orbit of Neptune. The study of the samples has provided a critical first look at the micrometer and larger solid materials that were at the edge of the solar system at the time that Kuiper Belt comets formed. Analysis of the samples has involved a number of challenges and surprises. These issues and the full implications of the information that the samples provide were intently discussed at the Timber Cove II meeting October 2628, 2008. The meeting was sponsored by the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) and it was held at a ruggedly beautiful and remote location on the Sonoma coast of northern California once protected by a Russian fort. Seventeen of the papers presented at the meeting are presented in this volume.