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PI : Fred Jourdan

Title : Further insight into the Collisional history of Asteroid Itokawa: Integrating petrography, EBSD and 40Ar/39Ar dating of dust particles.

Abstract

The rubble pile structure of Itokawa indicates that the later has been formed by the catastrophic disruption of a significantly larger parent body. Careful petrographic observations of selected dust particles, coupled with Electron Back Scattered Diffraction analyses will allow us to quantify the shock state of each of these particles. The results will be combined with state of the art single-grain 40Ar/39Ar analyses that will allow us to date the last time each of the particles was heated above a few hundred degrees, either indicating a crystallization age or an impact age for each of the particle. These results will be combined with our previous results obtained on two particles obtained during the AO1 and will provide a better understand of the collisional history of Asteroid Itokawa, as well as the break-up process itself.

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