LITMIR.BIZ

      Foreword

      Before the early 1950s, the immensity of the cosmos seemed essentially cold and barren. The launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, marked the beginning of the space age, and soon afterwards automated space explorers were sent through the solar system and orbiting terrestrial observatories were launched. At the same time, the development of advanced detection techniques and increasingly powerful telescopes contributed to the unprecedented rapid expansion of terrestrial observatories. All these developments led to a radical transformation of our view of both planetary atmospheres and interstellar medium, revealing an unexpected molecular abundance and giving birth to a new discipline: astrochemistry.

      This transformation relies heavily on the use of light as a messenger, providing information on the composition of these media by taking advantage of the available range of wavelengths. Indeed, although Newton understood the decomposition of visible light as early as 1666, it was not until 1800 that Herschel broadened our view with the discovery of infrared radiation, followed shortly by Ritter’s discovery of ultraviolet radiation, and then Röntgen’s 1895 discovery of X-rays. Then, Maxwell unified these various radiations in his electromagnetic field theory. Starting with the 1920s, the development of quantum physics by Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Pauli, Dirac, etc. brought the tools to understand why chemical elements (atoms and molecules) left a discrete signature, in the form of absorption or emission lines in the electromagnetic spectra, an observation that Wollaston and Fraunhofer had made over a century earlier. This laid the basis for the use of spectroscopy as an essential analytical tool.

Nevertheless, since molecules mainly absorb short wavelength radiation, infrared and microwave radiations, largely absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere, the advent of space observatories was decisive for astrochemistry. However, observatories in the microwave range were also set up at the ground level, at high altitude and very dry regions (ALMA), or airborne (stratospheric balloons, SOFIA). The astrophysicists now have a significant array of instruments available that are dedicated to spectroscopy, which obviously includes spectrometers airborne by space probes heading for Venus (Venus Express), Mars (Mars Express, TGO, etc.), Jupiter (Juno), Saturn (Cassini-Huygens), comets (Rosetta), etc. An exciting future lies ahead in this field, given the terrestrial observatories (E-ELT, etc.), space observatories (JWST,

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