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On the deceleration of cometary fragments in aerogel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

S.G. Coulson
S.G. Coulson
Affiliation:
Centre for Astrobiology, School of Mathematics, Cardiff University, 2 North Road, Cardiff CF10 3DY, UK e-mail: coulson@aldpartners.com
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Abstract

Determining the thermal history of the cometary grains captured by the Stardust mission presents a difficult problem. We consider two simplified models for the deceleration of hypervelocity particles captured in aerogel; both models assume a velocity squared drag force. The first model assumes that the mass of the particle remains constant during capture and the second that mass is lost due to ablation of the particle through interactions with the aerogel. It is found that the constant mass model adequately reproduces the track lengths, found from experiments by Hörz et al. in 2008, that impacted aluminium oxide spheres into aerogel at hypervelocities ~6 km s−1.

Deceleration in aerogel heats volatile particles such as organic ices to high temperatures greater than 1,000 K, for durations of ~1 μs: more than sufficient to completely ablate the particle. Refractory particles also experience significant heating greater than 2500 K, greater than the particle's melting point, over similar timescales. This suggests that the fragments recovered to Earth by the Stardust mission were considerably altered by hypersonic capture by aerogel, and so limits the amount of information that can be obtained regarding the formation of mineral and organic particles within Kuiper Belt comets.

Keywords

cometsstardusthypervelocity impacts
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 8 , Special Issue 1: Papers from the Astrobiology Society of Britain Conference 2008 , January 2009 , pp. 9 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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