Tracing the origin of volatile elements in Earth and Mars using nucleosynthetic compositions of potassium and zinc in meteorites.

The Solar System has long been thought to represent the only habitable planetary system.

The discovery that planets orbiting Sun-like stars are common in our Galaxy has fostered the concept of planetary habitability, which defines the conditions at the surface of a planet required for life to develop, including the presence of volatiles, energy, and organic chemistry.

Elucidating the relationship between the formation pathways of rocky planets and their potential habitability is crucial in that regard.One way to approach this is to determine the origin and composition of the building blocks of planets. Meteorites are witnesses of the earliest stages of planetary accretion and are ideal for this task.

Nucleosynthetic anomalies (which are mass-independent variations of the isotope composition) measured in meteorites provide insights into the building blocks of planets. They are robust tracers because they are not affected by geodynamic and chemical differentiation of the planets.

However, the determination of the building blocks of planets necessitates to consider a holistic approach considering constraints from elements with different volatility and cosmochemical behaviour in all extra-terrestrial materials.

For instance, nucleosynthetic anomalies of refractory lithophile and siderophile elements do not provide precise constraints on the origin of volatile elements in planets.The very recent identification of nucleosynthetic anomalies in moderately volatile elements K and Zn opens new avenues of research as robust proxies of more volatile elements.

This project aims at determining the source of the nucleosynthetic anomalies of moderately volatile elements and defining the building blocks of Earth and Mars building blocks and the source of volatile elements. I will use next generation instrumentation combined with emerging technologies to carry out this project.