On 30 July 2015, scientists reported that upon the first touchdown of the Philae lander on comet 67/P surface, measurements by the COSAC and Ptolemy instruments revealed sixteen organic compounds, four of which were seen for the first time on a comet, including acetamide, acetone, methyl isocyanate and propionaldehyde.
In 2017, two teams of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) interferometer made of 66 radio telescopes in the Atacama Desert (northern Chile) have discovered the presence of MIC around young Sun-like stars.
MIC is considered a prebiotic molecule as explained by the discoverers of the ALMA findings in IRAS 16293-2422, a multiple system of very young stars: "This family of organic molecules is involved in the synthesis of peptides and amino acids, which, in the form of proteins, are the biological basis for life as we know it".