Electron Microscopy Studies of Comet Wild-2 Particulate Residue Preserved in the Stardust Metallic Foil Craters

Details Electron Microscopy Studies of Comet Wild-2 Particulate Residue Preserved in the Stardust Metallic Foil Craters Electron Microscopy Studies of Comet Wild-2 Particulate Residue Preserved in the Stardust Metallic Foil Craters

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufm.p51e1236g&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #P51E-1236

Physics

6023 Comets: Dust Tails And Trails (6210), 6094 Instruments And Techniques, 6210 Comets (6023)

Scientific paper

The study of comets is fundamental to the understanding of early solar system processes. Much of the current knowledge of cometary compositions comes from `fly-by' missions or remote sensing studies but not, until now, from the laboratory analyses of samples. The Stardust spacecraft (NASA's 4th Discovery mission) was launched in 1999 and in January 2004 had a successful fly-by close to the nucleus of comet Wild 2. During the encounter, the collector tray assembly containing the principle particle capture technology of low- density silica aerogel was deployed. In addition, the metallic foils (1100 series Aluminum) wrapped around the collector frame also picked up material from the 6.1 km/s cometary particle collisions. Since the retrieval of the sample return capsule in January 2006, and as part of the preliminary examination, a selected number of foils have been scanned using SEM-EDX to locate cometary dust derived impact craters. Craters ranging from 100 nanometers to several hundreds of micrometers in diameter, containing both monomineralic and polymineralic projectile melts, have been identified, measured and analyzed. Focused ion beam microscopy techniques have been used to take cross-section slices of either individual craters or specific residue fragments, and thin them to electron transparency. TEM-EDX analysis of these slices shows that crystalline grains are occasionally preserved, despite the high shock pressures and temperatures that caused most of the particle to melt. Observations from the crater residues make a useful addition to studies of the composition and mineralogy of the cometary particulates preserved within the impact tracks in the silica aerogel. This work was in part performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration by the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.

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