SUISEI—A Versatile Global Model of Comets with Applications to Small Solar System Bodies

SUISEI is a suite of computational tools that has been developed over the past three decades and successfully applied to comets; including ComChem, a global, multi-fluid gas dynamics simulation with detailed chemical kinetics of the cometary coma; ComDust, a model of comet dust evolution and interaction with gas; and ComNuc, a 3-D simulation of gas and heat flow within the comet nucleus porous subsurface layers. The combination of these tools have resulted in an improved knowledge of chemical species in the comet’s coma and their relationship to native molecules in the nucleus ices by analyzing space- and ground-based observations and in situ measurements from spacecraft missions. A review of SUISEI is presented and applications are made to two cases: chemical recycling of HCN in comets and the physical conditions of the near-Sun object, 3200 Phaethon.