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Stardust interstellar preliminary examination – first
results.
Westphal A. J., Allen C., Bajt S., Bastien R., Bechtel
H. A., Borg J., Brenker F., Bridges J., Brownlee, D. E., Butterworth A.
L., Burchell M., Burghammer M., Clark B., Cody G., Floss C., Flynn G.,
Frank D., Gainsforth Z., Grün E., Hoppe P., Kearsley A., Kelley
N.,
Leroux H., Nittler L. R., Lettieri R., Mendez B., Marchant W., Sandford
S. A., Simionovici A., Stadermann F., Sternovsky Z., Stroud R. M.,
Sutton S., Tsou P., Tsuchiyama A., Tyliczszak T., Vekemans B., Vincze
L., Warren J., Zolensky M. E., and >23,000 Stardust@home dusters.
(2008)
71st Meteoritical Society Meeting, Abstract #xxxx.
ABSTRACT
The Stardust spacecraft exposed an aerogel and aluminum foil
collector to the interstellar dust stream for a total of 195 days
before its encounter with Comet P81/Wild2. We report the first results
of the Stardust Interstellar Preliminary Examination. This is a
formidable task because of the large collecting area (~1000 cm2),
the small expected statistics (a few dozen particles), the diminutive
size of the captured particles (<1µm), the challenging nature
of the collecting media, and the requirement that only minimally
destructive techniques be used. We have close coupling between state of
the art techniques and these challenging samples. The first analyses
have been performed using aerogel keystones and picokeystones extracted
directly from the Stardust Interstellar Collector in order to preserve
trajectory information.
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