Solar System Science with the Origins Space Telescope

The Origins Space Telescope is the mission concept for the Far Infrared Surveyor, a study in development by NASA in preparation for the 2020 Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey. With a few orders of magnitude gain in sensitivity over previous far-infrared missions, the telescope also provides high angular resolution to overcome spatial confusion in deep surveys, and new spectroscopic capabilities to detect water and other volatiles in planet forming disks as well as solar system objects.

OST's spectroscopic capabilities will facilitate an unprecedentedly large statistical study of volatile isotopes. With more than 100 comets from multiple reservoirs of diverse origin, Oort Cloud, Halley Type, and Jupiter Family, a better understanding of the delivery of volatiles to terrestrial planets, and their evolution across varying environments and histories of insolation. By expanding the measurements of D/H in comets to statistically meaningful numbers, OST will be able to map this ratio in much fainter and less active comets than current facilities can reach, and provide insight into the possible origins of Earth's oceans. OST will also characterize the most distant bodies in the solar system. OST will discover thousands of new TNOs while measuring their sizes down to 10km, thus providing size distributions that will test theories of their formation and origin. The high spatial resolution will detect activity in the most distant of comets, as well, and allow thermal imaging of extended structures of dark material or low-albedo binary companions that may accompany these distant bodies. We will introduce the vast array of solar system science that this survey mission offers.