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Stardust: An overview of the craters in
aluminium foils (calibration, classification and particle
size distribution).
Burchell M. J., Kearsley A. T., Wozniakiewicz P. J.,
Hörz F., Borg J., Graham G. A., Leroux H., Bridges J.
C., Bland P. A., Bradley J. P., Dai Z. R.,Teslich N., See
T., Warren J., Bastien R., Hoppe P., Heck P.R., Huth J.,
Stadermann F. J., Floss C., Marhas K., Stephan T., Leitner
J., and Green S. F. (2007)
European Planetary Science Congress, Potsdam.
ABSTRACT
The NASA Stardust mission to comet 81P/Wild-2 returned to
Earth in January 2006 carrying a cargo of dust captured
intact in aerogel and as residue rich craters in aluminium
foils. Although the aerogel (and its content of dust grains)
has gathered most attention, the foils have also been
subject to extensive analysis. Many groups contributed to
the dimensional characterization of representative
populations of foilcraters in the Preliminary Examination
and combined with a laboratory calibration this yielded a
particle size distribution of the dust encountered during
the fly by of the comet. The calibration experiments will be
described in this paper in detail.
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