Coordination Funds

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Our solar system formed 4.6 Ga ago from a collapsing cloud of interstellar gas and dust. Questions about the very origin of our Earth and planets - and the prospect of detecting Earth-like, potentially life-harbouring planets - are of tremendous scientific and public interest. The most important and critical step in building the Earth and other planets was probably the coalescence of planetesimals out of dust in the first few million years of our solar system’s existence. The mechanisms and rates involved in this step can be revealed by analysing material left over from this growth process and accessible as meteorites or cometary and interstellar dust samples returned by the STARDUST mission. The SPP aims to initiate and provide the means for comprehensive and interdisciplinary studies on key aspects of planetesimal formation in the early solar system. The SPP is particularly timely due to the new research opportunities provided by the availability of extraterrestrial materials and new analytical technology. A key future technique to study elemental and isotopic compositions on a micrometer level with high precision is SIMS (Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry, “ion microprobe”). In the 2nd funding period, an ion microprobe CAMECA 1280HR was granted and will be installed in the 3rd funding period. As a national facility, this instrument is going to serve the whole SPP, and will provide high quality data on long terms for both the cosmochemistry and geoscience communities. In the 3rd funding period, further central coordination measures shall establish the new dynamics by the special priority programme.