Gelato: A Mission Concept for Comet Surface Sample ReturnOPEN ACCESS 

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Mallory J. Kinczyk, Gabriel E. Buffo, L. Miché Aaron-Hennig, Spencer Boone, Eric Frizzell, Abigail Flom, Chinmayee Govinda Raj, Camilla Harris, Ali Hyder, Benjamin Idini

The Planetary Science Journal, Volume 7, Number 7, published: 30 July 2026

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“Understanding the role of comets in solar system formation and evolution has continued to be a driving question in planetary science. It is believed that comets host a record of presolar history and early planet formation and likely delivered volatiles and organic materials to the inner solar system. Previous missions performed in situ compositional analysis of cometary coma materials. However, coma materials are thought to be heavily processed and therefore not necessarily representative of the nucleus from which they are derived. Laboratory analysis of a comet nucleus sample would provide important ground truth for remote observations of comet materials. Gelato is a comet surface sample return mission concept studied by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s 2022 Planetary Science Summer School that would address critical questions outlined in the 2023–2032 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey and the New Frontiers 4 Announcement of Opportunity related to the nature of comet formation and the origin of solar system materials. Central to Gelato’s objectives are deciphering the early compositional diversity of radionuclides in the protoplanetary disk, elucidating the role of comets in transporting volatiles to Earth, and understanding the origins of biologically relevant organic matter that may have influenced the origin of life on Earth. Building on the rich dataset from the Rosetta mission, Gelato would explore and sample the Jupiter-family comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The spacecraft would use a BiBlade sampling chain to collect a single sample that would be stored on board at a noncryogenic temperature with separate volatiles containment and returned to Earth for analysis.”

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