Announcement

Context

Small bodies preserve a record of the physical and chemical processes that shaped the solar system, from its galactic birth environment and molecular clouds to protoplanetary disks. Planetesimal formation, and the subsequent dynamical, collisional, thermal, and chemical evolution shaped present-day asteroids and comets. Understanding this connected history requires evidence and expertise that are usually distributed across astronomy, planetary science, cosmochemistry, geophysics, materials science, laboratory studies, theoretical modelling, and space exploration.

This workshop comes at a particularly timely moment. Samples returned by JAXA’s Hayabusa2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx missions are providing unprecedented information on primitive asteroids. China’s Tianwen-2 mission, launched in 2025, targets a near-Earth quasi-satellite and a main-belt comet, while Japan’s Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission will investigate Mars’s small satellites. At the same time, ALMA and JWST observations of star and planet forming environments and rapidly developing theories allow the earliest stages of star and planetary system evolution to be connected more directly to the small bodies observed and sampled today.

By bringing together experts across national and disciplinary boundaries, the workshop will establish the current state of knowledge, identify the principal “Grand Challenges” for the coming decade, improve the interpretation of mission and laboratory data, and help shape priorities for future observations, experiments, modelling, and exploration.

Objectives

The main aim of the workshop is to synthesize our current understanding of small-body formation and evolution and construct a coherent, cross-disciplinary picture of planetary-system evolution from its origins to the present day. Extended overview talks, shorter topical talks, and dedicated discussion sessions will connect the following themes:

● From molecular clouds to protoplanetary disks

● Evolution of protoplanetary disks

● Planetesimal formation

● Thermochemical evolution of small bodies

● Collisional and dynamical evolution of small bodies

● Small bodies in the solar system today

● Grand challenges and future missions

The workshop will maximize the scientific return from small-body studies, establish shared goals among neighboring fields, and promote new international and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Product

The principal product will be a coordinated series of peer-reviewed review papers, published as a special issue of Space Science Reviews and subsequently as a hardcover volume in the Space Science Series of ISSI (Springer). The planned volume is expected to contain the following chapters:

● From molecular clouds to protoplanetary disks: dynamics

● From molecular clouds to protoplanetary disks: chemistry

● Evolution of protoplanetary disks: dynamics

● Evolution of protoplanetary disks: chemistry

● Planetesimal formation

● Thermochemical evolution of small bodies

● Collisional and dynamical evolution of small bodies

● Small bodies in the solar system today

● Grand challenges and future missions

The volume is intended for planetary scientists, astronomers, astrophysicists, cosmochemists, geophysicists, materials scientists, graduate students, early-career researchers, mission planners, and space-agency scientists. It will combine results from recent missions and facilities with an interdisciplinary and forward-looking roadmap for the field.

Conveners