Exporting terrestrial life out of the Solar System requires a process that both embeds microbes in boulders and ejects those boulders out of the Solar System. We explore the possibility that Earthgrazing long-period comets (LPCs) and interstellar objects (ISOs) could export life from Earth by collecting microbes from the atmosphere and receiving a gravitational slingshot effect from the Earth. We estimate the total number of exportation events over the lifetime of the Earth to be ~1–10 for LPCs and ~1–50 for ISOs. If life existed above an altitude of 100 km, then the number is dramatically increased up to ~105 exportation events over Earth's lifetime.

A brief history of research concerning the risk of impacts by asteroids or comets onto the Earth is presented with attention to the role played by the IAU. Special focus is placed on the events that occurred about 20 years ago, which caused the IAU to become seriously involved in dealing with the impact hazard and to take a leading role in international coordination of these activities.

We give an overview of Focus Meeting 5 on the new field of Terra-Astronomy.

This paper discussed whether 17th Century observers left historical records of the plasma tails of comets that would be adequate to enable us to extract the physical parameters of the solar wind. The size of the aberration angle between a comet’s tail and its radius-vector defines the type of the tail: plasma or dust. We considered Bredikhin’s calculations of the parameters for 10 comet tails observed during the Maunder minimum (1645 – 1715). For those comets the angle between the tail’s axis and the radius-vector on average exceeded the value of 10° that is typical for dust tails. It was noted that visual observations of the ion tails of comets are very difficult to make owing to the spectral composition of their radiation, confirming the conclusion that observations of comet tails made in the 17th Century are not suitable for deriving past values of the physical parameters of the solar wind.

VLT instruments and ALMA have revolutionized in the past five years our view and understanding of how disks turn into planetary systems. They provide exquisite insights into non-axisymmetric structures likely closely related to ongoing planet formation processes. The following cannot be a complete review of the physical and chemical properties of disks; instead I focus on a few selected aspects. I will review our current understanding of the physical properties (e.g. solid and gas mass content, snow and ice lines) and chemical composition of planet forming disks at ages of 1-few Myr, especially in the context of the planetary systems that are forming inside them. I will highlight recent advances achieved by means of consistent multi-wavelength studies of gas AND dust in protoplanetary disks.

Since the first discovery of a Jupiter-mass planet in 1995 more than 2000 exo-planets have been found to exist around main sequence stars. The detection techniques are based on the radial velocity method (which involves the measurement of the star's wobbling induced by the gravitational field of the orbiting giant planets) or on transit photometry by using space telescopes (Kepler, Corot, Hubble and Spitzer) outside the absorbing Earth atmosphere. From the ground, as infrared observations are strongly limited by atmospheric absorption, radioastronomy offers almost the only possible way to search for water presence and abundance in the planetary atmospheres of terrestrial-type planets where life may evolve. Following the discovery in 1994 of the first water maser emission in the atmosphere of Jupiter induced by a cometary impact, our measurements have shown that the water maser line at 22 GHz (1.35 cm) can be used as a powerful diagnostic tool for water search outside the solar system, as comets are able to deliver considerable amounts of water to planets raising the fascinating possibility of extraterrestrial life evolution. Thus in 1999 we started the systematic search for water on 35 different targets up to 50 light years away from the Sun. Here we report the first detection of the water maser emission from the exoplanetary systems Epsilon Eridani, Lalande 21185 and Gliese 581. We have shown the peculiar feasibility of water detection and its importance in the search for exoplanetary systems especially for the Astrobiology programs, given the possibility of long period observations using powerful radiotelescopes equipped with adequate spectrometers.

This paper provides a brief overview of the journey of molecules through the Cosmos, from local diffuse interstellar clouds and PDRs to distant galaxies, and from cold dark clouds to hot star-forming cores, protoplanetary disks, planetesimals and exoplanets. Recent developments in each area are sketched and the importance of connecting astronomy with chemistry and other disciplines is emphasized. Fourteen challenges for the field of Astrochemistry in the coming decades are formulated.

Since 2011, Oukaimeden Observatory (OUCA) has become one of the active NEO search facilities in the word. Its discovery statistics shows that the MOSS (Morocco Oukaimeden Sky Survey) project received credits for more than 2,145 new designations, including 3 NEOs and 4 comets. Its excellent astro-climactic characteristics are partly behind the success. The average number of observable nights is around 280 nights per year, while median seeing is 0.8-0.9 arcsec. We completed construction of a new telescope at the site in March 2015. It is Optical Wide-field Patrol (OWL) facility designed and built by Korea Space Science Institute (KASI). The primary objective of this facility is to monitor national space assets of Korea; either wide-field imaging- or fast data acquisition- capabilities enable the 0.5m telescope to conduct observation programs to catalog and follow-up various transient events in the night sky. We present the seeing condition, the OWL system and preliminary results obtained at OWL@Oukaimeden during the past several months.

The two Pan-STARRS telescopes, located on Haleakala, Maui, Hawaii, are 1.8-meter diameter telescopes equipped with 1.4 Gigapixel cameras that deliver 7 square degree fields-of-view. The first of these telescopes, Pan-STARRS1, is conducting a search for Near Earth Objects, and is currently the leading discoverer of Near Earth Objects. The second telescope, Pan-STARRS2, is nearing the end of its commissioning, and is becoming more productive.

Pan-STARRS has become the leading survey for Near Earth Objects, responsible for approximately half of the NEO discoveries to date in 2015. Pan-STARRS is also the leading discoverer of new comets.

Comets provide a very different but well understood environment in which to search for DIBs. Observations of occultations by cometary comae have not detected DIBs, but none were very near the nucleus, where the column density of dust is highest. We report here unidentified emission bands, centered at λ4430, very near the nucleus of comet Hyakutake. These may be vaporized forms of grain carriers or fragments of large-molecule carriers. At least two different species appear to be present based on two different spatial distributions.

Australasian amateur astronomers, Grigg and Ross, discovered four different comets between 1902 and 1907. Controversy surrounding these discoveries led to a deterioration in relations between Australia's leading amateur astronomers and Baracchi at Melbourne Observatory, and to the eventual transfer of the ‘Australian Central Bureau’ to Sydney Observatory.

A significant number of molecules that are used in contemporary biochemistry on Earth are found in interstellar and circumstellar regions as well as solar system environments. In particular small solar system bodies hold clues to processes that formed our solar system. Comets, asteroids, and meteorite delivered extraterrestrial material during the heavy bombardment phase ~3.9 billion years ago to the young planets, a process that made carbonaceous material available to the early Earth. In-depth understanding of the organic reservoir in different space environments as well as data on the stability of organic and prebiotic material in solar system environments are vital to assess and quantify the extraterrestrial contribution of prebiotic sources available to the young Earth.

For many years, it has been assumed that Jupiter has prevented the Earth from being subject to a punishing impact regime that would have greatly hindered the development of life. Here, we present the fourth in a series of dynamical studies investigating this hypothesis. In our earlier work, we examined the effect of Jupiter's mass on the impact rate experienced by the Earth. Here, we extend that approach to consider the influence of Jupiter's orbital eccentricity and inclination on the impact rate from asteroidal bodies and short-period comets. We first considered scenarios in which Jupiter's orbital eccentricity was somewhat higher and somewhat lower than that in our Solar System, for a variety of ‘Jupiter’ masses. We find that Jupiter's orbital eccentricity plays a moderate role in determining the impact flux at Earth, with more eccentric orbits resulting in a noticeably higher impact rate of asteroids than is the case for more circular orbits. This is particularly pronounced at high ‘Jupiter’ masses. For the short-period comets, the same effect is clearly apparent, albeit to a much lesser degree. The flux of short-period comets impacting the Earth is slightly higher for more eccentric Jovian orbits. We also considered scenarios in which Jupiter's orbital inclination was greater than that in our Solar System. Increasing Jupiter's orbital inclination greatly increased the flux of asteroidal impactors upon the Earth. However, at the highest tested inclination, the disruption to the Asteroid belt was so great that the belt would be entirely depleted after an astronomically short period of time. In such a system, the impact flux from asteroid bodies would therefore be very low, after an initial period of intense bombardment. By contrast, the influence of Jovian inclination on impacts from short-period comets was very small. A slight reduction in the impact flux was noted for the moderate and high inclination scenarios considered in this work – the results for inclinations of 5° and 25° were essentially identical.

The nature of cometary organic matter is of great interest to investigations involving the formation and distribution of organic matter relevant to the origin of life. We have used pyrolysis–Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to investigate the chemical effects of the irradiation of naturally occurring bitumens, and to relate their products of pyrolysis to their parent assemblages. The information acquired has then been applied to the complex organic matter present in cometary nuclei and comae. Amalgamating the FTIR data presented here with data from published studies enables the inference of other comprehensive trends within hydrocarbon mixtures as they are progressively irradiated in a cometary environment, namely the polymerization of lower molecular weight compounds; an increased abundance of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon structures; enrichment in 13C; reduction in atomic H/C ratio; elevation of atomic O/C ratio and increase in the temperature required for thermal degradation. The dark carbonaceous surface of a cometary nucleus will display extreme levels of these features, relative to the nucleus interior, while material in the coma will reflect the degree of irradiation experienced by its source location in the nucleus. Cometary comae with high methane/water ratios indicate a nucleus enriched in methane, favouring the formation of complex organic matter via radiation-induced polymerization of simple precursors. In contrast, production of complex organic matter is hindered in a nucleus possessing a low methane/water ration, with the complex organic matter that does form possessing more oxygen-containing species, such as alcohol, carbonyl and carboxylic acid functional groups, resulting from reactions with hydroxyl radicals formed by the radiolysis of the more abundant water. These insights into the properties of complex cometary organic matter should be of particular interest to both remote observation and space missions involving in situ analyses and sample return of cometary materials.