New technologies for extraterrestrial grain capture and analysis

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

3

Scientific paper

We discuss new technologies which will be useful in capturing, recovering, and analyzing hypervelocity extraterrestrial grains using aerogel collectors. Two of the techniques that we will discuss also have application to existing and approved experiments, such as STARDUST, a US cometary sample return mission using aerogel collectors. We plan to explore experimentally, in the near future, the viability of a novel calorimetric aerogel, which would both greatly facilitate the finding of stopping hypervelocity grains, and would give a measure of their velocities, thus distinguishing extraterrestrial from anthropogenic grains before extraction and analysis. As one example, this would enable deployment of an interstellar grain collector in low earth orbit. We plan to explore the feasibility of extracting small grains using polysilicon microtweezers. We are refining our automated scanning techniques for application to scanning aerogel collectors. Finally, we are investigating the apparent intact capture of grains at 19-21 km s-1 in aerogel collectors.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

New technologies for extraterrestrial grain capture and analysis does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with New technologies for extraterrestrial grain capture and analysis, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and New technologies for extraterrestrial grain capture and analysis will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1054406

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.