Small bodies in the Solar System are thought to be surviving remnants from the epoch of planet formation, offering valuable insights into the processes that governed planetesimal formation. Objects that formed in the outer part of the protoplanetary disk, beyond Jupiter, were later subject to dynamical processes that transported them into different reservoirs throughout the Solar System. The remnants of these primordial planetesimals now constitute the bulk of the members of today’s populations in the outer Solar System: trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), Centaurs, Neptune and Jupiter Trojans, Irregular satellites, Comets, Main-Belt comets (MBCs) and outer-Main-Belt asteroids. The members of the different populations have undergone various levels of evolutionary processing, depending on their formation location, dynamical history, and environmental exposure. Therefore, today’s observed diversity among small bodies reflects a complex combination of primordial characteristics and evolutionary modifications.
This workshop will integrate JWST data with other observations, in situ measurements, laboratory experiments, and evolutionary models. This interdisciplinary approach will allow us to disentangle primordial and evolutionary features and develop a unified model of outer Solar System formation and evolution. Our main goals are to establish a comprehensive picture of the evolutionary links among outer Solar System populations and to constrain models of planetesimal formation and disk composition.