 Within the Solar System , the nucleon fraction of xenon is 1 @.@ 56 × 10 − 8 , for an abundance of approximately one part in 630 thousand of the total mass . Xenon is relatively rare in the Sun 's atmosphere , on Earth , and in asteroids and comets . The planet Jupiter has an unusually high abundance of xenon in its atmosphere ; about 2 @.@ 6 times as much as the Sun . This high abundance remains unexplained and may have been caused by an early and rapid buildup of planetesimals — small , subplanetary bodies — before the presolar disk began to heat up . ( Otherwise , xenon would not have been trapped in the planetesimal ices . ) The problem of the low terrestrial xenon may potentially be explained by covalent bonding of xenon to oxygen within quartz , hence reducing the outgassing of xenon into the atmosphere . 
