Surface of Young Jupiter Family Comet 81 P/Wild 2: View from the Stardust Spacecraft

Details Surface of Young Jupiter Family Comet 81 P/Wild 2: View from the Stardust Spacecraft Surface of Young Jupiter Family Comet 81 P/Wild 2: View from the Stardust Spacecraft

Jun 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004sci...304.1764b&link_type=abstract

Science, Volume 304, Issue 5678, pp. 1764-1769 (2004).

Physics

130

Scientific paper

Images taken by the Stardust mission during its flyby of 81P/Wild 2 show the comet to be a 5-kilometer oblate body covered with remarkable topographic features, including unusual circular features that appear to be impact craters. The presence of high-angle slopes shows that the surface is cohesive and self-supporting. The comet does not appear to be a rubble pile, and its rounded shape is not directly consistent with the comet being a fragment of a larger body. The surface is active and yet it retains ancient terrain. Wild 2 appears to be in the early stages of its degradation phase as a small volatile-rich body in the inner solar system.

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