Dr Mark Price (SPS) – Dean fund proposal: November 2012, final report.

Summary: request for funds to partially fund attendance of the world’s leading Space Science conference in Houston, Texas – March 2013.

Amount requested: £1200; amount awarded: £900.

Outcome:

The Lunar and Planetary Space Conference (LPSC) is the worlds largest, and arguably best attended, conference for the dissemination of scientific results in the field of planetary and space science. In 2013 this five day conference had over 1500 delegates, presenting more than 500 talks, and 1000 posters.

The PI gave two oral presentations, and two poster presentations, including a poster presentation from his PhD student. A PDRA from within SPS also attended (Dr. Penny Wozniakiewicz) and she gave three oral presentations and chaired a session on the first day of the conference. This joint effort gave the Solar System group from Kent very high visibility at the conference, which was commented on by several of the delegates.

In addition to showcasing the research undertaken without the Impact Group, the PI also attended two meetings at the conference to discuss Kent’s role in two major international projects.

1) NASA’s Stardust mission. This mission successfully returned cometary and interstellar dust samples to the Earth in 2006. Kent, under the direction of the PI and Prof. Mark Burchell, have been heavily involved in this project and have provided invaluable calibration work and sample analyses for both the initial cometary sample investigation phase, and the later interstellar investigation phase.

Both of these initial examination phases are coming to a close, and the meeting was to discuss what would happen next. The outcome was, that due to NASA funding limitations, both the sample sets are to be archived. However, a suite of eleven publications are to be written describing the outcome of the analyses by all the groups. These papers are in various stages of the review process, and the PI and Prof. Burchell are co-authors on all of them, including a Science paper which will be submitted once the other papers have been accepted for publication. The publication of this paper will mark the officially end of the preliminary analyses phases.

2) Hayabusa sample analysis. In 2010 the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa returned samples of the Itokawa asteroid to Earth. Under a peer review system, the Japanese space agency has released some of these samples for analyses by International teams. The Open University has been co-ordinating the UK’s effort, and has successfully acquired two such grains. At the meeting at LPSC, the consortium (which the PI is a part) discussed the analyses that would be carried out on these precious samples. It was decided that Kent would be first in the analysis chain and would undertake Raman measurements of the grains using the new state-of-the-art Raman spectrometer recently purchased for the School. The PI runs the instrument, and will carry out the measurements on the samples. Attendance of this meeting was vitally important to give visibility to Kent, and to get access to the samples.

In summary, the conference was tiring, but very successful, with the PI’s research showcased, the successful ending of one international project, and the beginning of another. All this would not have been possible without the financial support of the Dean’s fund.

Kent work presented at LPSC 2013:

1) [Oral] SECONDARY EJECTA CLOUDS FROM HYPERVELOCITY IMPACTS ON ALUMINIUM AND GLASS TARGETS: COMPARISON BETWEEN EXPERIMENTS AND HYDROCODE MODELLING
M. C. Price, P. J. Wozniakiewicz, M. J. Cole, M. J. Burchell

2) [Oral] SURVIVAL OF NANNOCHLOROPSIS PHYTOPLANKTON IN HYPERVELOCITY IMPACT EVENTS UP TO VELOCITIES OF 4 KM S-1

D. L. S. Pasini, M. C. Price, M. J. Burchell, and M. J. Cole.

3) [Oral] OBLIQUE IMPACT CRATERS: MORPHOLOGY DEPENDENCE ON IMPACTOR SIZE.

P. J. Wozniakiewicz, M. C. Price, M. J. Burchell, M. J. Cole and A. T. Kearsley

4) [Oral] PRESERVATION AND MODIFICATION OF FINE-GRAINED COMETARY DUST CAPTURED BY STARDUST: THE FATE OF AGGREGATE COMPONENTS IN HYPERVELOCITY IMPACTS ON ALUMINIUM FOIL.

T. Kearsley, T. Salge, P. J. Wozniakiewicz, M. C. Price, R. Terborg, M. J. Burchell, and M. J. Cole

5) [Oral] PRE-ACCRETIONAL SORTING OF GEMS IN THE OUTER SOLAR NEBULA

P. Wozniakiewicz, J. P. Bradley, H. A. Ishii, D. E. Brownlee, M. C. Price, M. J. Burchell and A. T. Kearsley

6) [Poster] GAS RETENTION IN BASALTIC ROCKS FOLLOWING HYPERVELOCITY IMPACT: IMPLICATIONS FOR METHANE ON MARS.

M. C. Price, J. Parnell, P. J. Wozniakiewicz, A. T. Kearsley, S. McMahon, N. J. F. Blamey and M. J. Burchell

7) [Poster] IMPACT-INDUCED DEVOLATIZATION OF NATURAL GYPSUM AND PLASTER OF PARIS: AN INFRA-RED AND RAMAN SPECTROSCOPIC STUDY.

K. Miljković, M. C. Price, P. J. Wozniakiewicz, N. J. Mason and J. C. Zarnecki.

8) [Poster] A MORPHOMETRIC INVESTIGATION OF MARTIAN VALLEY NETWORKS.

N. K. Ramkissoon & P. Elsner.

9) [Poster] FIB-TEM INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE CONDITION OF REFRACTORY PRESOLAR PHASES UNDER STARDIST-LIKE CONDITIONS
T. K. Croat, C. Floss, S. Sosothikul, F. J. Stadermann, A. T. Kearsley, M. J. Burchell

10) HELIOCENTRIC VARIATION OF COSMIC DUST FLUX MEASURED BY THE IKAROS-ALADDIN BETWEEN THE EARTH AND VENUS

H. Yano, T. Hirai, C. Okamoto, M. Fujii, M. Tanaka, N. Moriyama, M. J. Burchell, IKAROS-ALLADIN Team