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Non-random spatial distribution of impacts in the stardust cometary collector
| Content Provider | NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) |
|---|---|
| Author | Bridges, John Brownlee, Donald E. Floss, Christine Clark, Benton C. Westphal, Andrew J. Djouadi, Zahia Burchell, Mark J. Cheng, Andrew F. Bastien, Ronald K. Borg, Janet |
| Copyright Year | 2007 |
| Description | In January 2004, the Stardust spacecraft flew through the coma of comet P81/Wild2 at a relative speed of 6.1 km/sec. Cometary dust was collected at in a 0.1 sq m collector consisting of aerogel tiles and aluminum foils. Two years later, the samples successfully returned to earth and were recovered. We report the discovery that impacts in the Stardust cometary collector are not distributed randomly in the collecting media, but appear to be clustered on scales smaller than approx.10 cm. We also report the discovery of at least two populations of oblique tracks. We evaluated several hypotheses that could explain the observations. No hypothesis was consistent with all the observations, but the preponderance of evidence points toward at least one impact on the central Whipple shield of the spacecraft as the origin of both clustering and low-angle oblique tracks. High-angle oblique tracks unambiguously originate from a noncometary impact on the spacecraft bus just forward of the collector. Here we summarize the observations, and review the evidence for and against three scenarios that we have considered for explaining the impact clustering found on the Stardust aerogel and foil collectors. |
| File Size | 118051 |
| Page Count | 2 |
| File Format | |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://archive.org/details/NASA_NTRS_Archive_20070011541 |
| Archival Resource Key | ark:/13960/t5fc01r7n |
| Language | English |
| Publisher Date | 2007-01-01 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Geophysics Comets Aerogels Samplers Dust Hypotheses Spatial Distribution Accumulators Statistical Distributions Stardust Mission Aerosols Metal Foils Ntrs Nasa Technical Reports Server (ntrs) Nasa Technical Reports Server Aerodynamics Aircraft Aerospace Engineering Aerospace Aeronautic Space Science |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
