[meteorite-list] Announcement on Availability of Particles

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:29:54 2004
Message-ID: <200309140529.WAA23659_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www-curator.jsc.nasa.gov/curator/dust/Leonid_shwr_Grigg_Skjellerup.htm

Availability of particles from collection surfaces exposed in the Stratosphere during
the 2002 Leonid Shower (comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle), and Earth's predicted crossing of
the dust steam from comet Grigg-Skjellerup in 2003

Johnson Space Center

The majority of stratospheric collections are made at random times. However, ever
since Dermott and Liou (1994) proposed that there should be enhancements in certain
types of asteroidal dust at certain times of the year, we have endeavored to build up
a collection of collection surfaces targeted at different times throughout the year.
Typically, these take the form of collectors, both large and small, flown for one
calendar month only. Inspection of our holdings of collection surfaces will reveal
many of these surfaces. In the past year we have made two targeted collections of the
stratosphere in attempts to collect dust from specific comets. We consider these
efforts to be long shots, since the enhancements of the comet dust over background
extraterrestrial material are not terribly large. Still we have made a special effort
to provide these collection surfaces to the community, since the potential payoffs
from successfully locating comet dust from a known source are so great.

55P/Tempel-Tuttle

We directed a NASA ER-2 aircraft to fly at ~20 km over the southwestern USA for a
period of 4 days beginning on Nov 19 in an attempt to collect Leonid storm debris from
comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle (Rietmeijer et al., 2003). These flights began on the day of
the shower peaks, and continued for the next 3 days. The two small collection
surfaces, U2108 and U2109, each collected for a total period of 8 hours and 3 minutes.
Based upon measurements of the rather high particle entry velocities for this shower,
we would expect that any surviving Tempel-Tuttle samples would be silicate spheres
(having melted). Preliminary inspection of the collectors showed nothing out of the
ordinary, that is ~1 (probable) large chondritic IDP per collector per collection
hour. There was one apparent black sphere on one of the collectors; none on the other.

These collection surfaces are available for particle allocations as part of the
routine JSC Stratospheric Particle Curation Program.

Grigg-Skjellerup

This year, we also made an attempt to collect dust from comet Grigg-Skjellerup. In a
recent report (Messenger, 2003), four short-period comets were identified that have
produced Earth-crossing dust streams in the past century with low Earth-encounter
velocities. Dust from these comets enters the atmosphere with velocities ranging from
15 to 21 km/s, low enough that even some very large particles could survive
atmospheric entry without melting (Love and Brownlee, 1998). Among these, comet
Grigg-Skjellerup was identified as the best candidate for collection owing to its
fortuitously close encounters with Earth's orbital path for seven apparitions
beginning in 1967. The Earth encounters the Grigg-Skjellerup dust stream during April
23-24th each year, with peak anticipated fluxes in 2003 and 2004. The estimated
number of particles that could be collected from this dust stream are uncertain, but
may reach 1 to 50 % of the large (>40 um) size IDPs.

To permit testing of this prediction, and therefore possibly collect samples of comet
Grigg-Skjellerup we flew two dedicated large area stratospheric collectors (L2054 and
L2055) on a NASA ER-2 aircraft for a total of 7.9 hours during the period April 30-31,
2003, over the southwestern USA. These collectors were only exposed during this
period, however despite this fact these two collectors should contain many IDPs from
many sources (not just from Grigg-Skjellerup), so one would probably have to analyze
many grains from these collectors before Grigg-Skjellerup samples could be identified
(if they are indeed present in significant numbers). Two additional large area
collectors (L2052 and L2053) were also flown during this period, though they had
already accumulated 13 hours each from previous flights. Thus these latter collectors
might also contain Grigg-Skjellerup grains, but should also contain many other IDPs
from other sources, and are therefore less valuable for this exercise.

These collection surfaces are available for particle allocations as part of the
routine JSC Stratospheric Particle Curation Program.

Discussion

Since the abundance of samples from the target comets' particles are probably well
below the background IDP flux to the stratospheric collectors, it will be necessary to
identify them on the basis of some distinguishing feature. For example, very short
space exposure ages should be characteristic of these particular comet grains. Two
possible measurements of space residence time are solar flare tracks (which shows that
most IDPs have been in space for thousands of years) and solar noble gas (which
saturates the surfaces in the order of hundreds of years). Solar noble gases can also
be used to estimate the peak temperatures experienced by particles during their
descent into the atmosphere. There may also be mineralogic or compositional
characteristics particular to these comets which could be recognized. The
size-dependant flux of the Grigg-Skjellerup dust and the diluting effect of
stratospheric residence time both favor searching for samples from this particular
comet among large (probably cluster) IDPs, in the size range of 40 micrometers and
larger. For comet Tempel-Tuttle samples, their large atmospheric entry velocities
would make silicate spheres the most likely candidates.

Samples from these collectors are now available to any qualified investigator, in the
same manner as are all of our stratospheric samples. All sample requests should be
sent to the Cosmic Dust Curator, Michael Zolensky (michael.e.zolensky_at_nasa.gov).
All such requests will then be relayed to the Cosmic Dust Working Group for peer
review.

The allocation of complete collection surfaces is not an option in this instance,
since there are two few of these (only two for each collection opportunity). However,
as in the past any qualified investigators are welcome (and encouraged) to visit the
Cosmic Dust Lab at JSC to inspect and select potential samples for allocation.

References

Dermott S.F. and Liou J.C. (1994) Detection of asteroidal dust particles from known
families in near-Earth orbits. In Analysis of Interplanetary Dust (Eds. M. Zolensky,
T. Wilson, F. Rietmeijer and G. Flynn), American Institute of Physics, New York, pp.
13-22.

Messenger S. (2002) Opportunities for the Stratospheric Collection of Dust from
Short-Period Comets. Meteoritics and Planetary Science 37, 1491.

Rietmeijer F., Pfeffer M., Chizmadia L., Macy B., Fischer T., Zolensky M., Warren J.,
and Jenniskens P. (2003) Leonid dust spheres captured during the 2002 storm - Lunar and
Planetary Science XXXIV, The Lunar and Planetary Institute.

Love S. and Brownlee D. (1998) Heating and Thermal Transformation of Micrometeoroids
Entering the Earth's Atmosphere, Icarus 89, 26.
Received on Sun 14 Sep 2003 01:29:46 AM PDT