Fine-grained Material Associated with a Large Sulfide returned from Comet 81P/Wild 2

Abstract

In a consortium analysis of a large particle captured from the coma of comet 81P/Wild 2 by the Stardust spacecraft, we report the discovery of a field of fine-grained material (FGM) in contact with a large sulfide particle. The FGM was partially located in an embayment in the sulfide, so appears to have been largely protected from damage during hypervelocity capture in aerogel. Some of the FGM particles are indistinguishable in their characteristics from common components of chondritic-porous interplanetary dust particles (CP-IDPs), including glass with embedded metals and sulfides (GEMS) and equilibrated aggregates (EAs). The sulfide exhibits surprising Ni-rich lamellae, which may indicate that this particle experienced a long-duration heating event after its formation but before incorporation into Wild 2. We discuss the relationship of the FGM to the sulfide, to other Wild 2 particles and to the history of the Solar nebula.

References in corpus (4)

• Quantum ESPRESSO: a modular and open-source software project for quantum simulations of materials
• Aerogel keystones: extraction of complete hypervelocity impact events from aerogel collectors
• Incorporation of a Late-forming Chondrule into Comet Wild 2
• Oxygen Isotopic Composition of Coarse- and Fine-grained Material from Comet 81P/Wild 2

Cited by in corpus (2)

• FeI and NiI in cometary atmospheres. Connections between the NiI/FeI abundance ratio and chemical characteristics of Jupiter-family and Oort-cloud comets
• Automatic detection of impact craters on Al foils from the Stardust interstellar dust collector using convolutional neural networks