Solar System Astronomy

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Our solar system contains the answers to some of our most fundamental questions. What is our origin? Could there be more of us (life) out there? Yet the current state of our solar system depends critically on the details of its as-yet-poorly understood formation process. This process occured 4.5 billion years ago but many clues remain, some in unlikely places. Fundamental to the question of origins are the small bodies of our solar system: asteroids, comets and meteoroids. The large bodies such as the Sun and planets are also important of course but have been subjected to substantial alteration over their lifetimes. Consider the Earth: the physical, chemical, geological and even biological processing it has undergone is tremendous. Smaller bodies, being geologically quiet, have remained largely unchanged since early times. Much key information that has been erased from the larger bodies remains "fossilized'' in the smaller ones.