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Oxygen Isotopes in Stardust Mission Samples


April 28, 2015, noon - 1 p.m.
Slichter 3843

Presented By:
Chris Snead
UCLA

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In 2006, NASA's Stardust mission returned dust samples from comet 81P/Wild2; these samples represented the first known samples from a cometary parent body. Important motivations for collecting material from a Kuiper belt object included constraining models for the origin and evolution of oxygen isotope heterogeneities in the early solar nebula and comparing comet dust to other types of extraterrestrial materials such as Interplanetary Dust Particles (IDPs) and meteorites. I will discuss the development of techniques for measuring the oxygen isotope composition of impact crater residues Al foil targets and report the results of measurements for seven of eight allocated craters from the Stardust spacecraft.