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PI : Rosario Brunetto

Title : FTIR MICRO-TOMOGRAPHY OF HAYABUSA GRAINS

Abstract

Extraterrestrial materials coming from small Solar System bodies (meteorites, IDPs, asteroid and comet dust particles returned by the Hayabusa-1 and Stardust missions) are characterized by a large mineralogical, structural and compositional heterogeneity at different scales (from nm to mm), which witnesses the complexity of the pre-accretional (solar nebula) and post-accretional (parent bodies) processes. We plan to study this heterogeneity by using FTIR micro-tomography, thanks to our new dedicated experimental setup mounted at the SMIS beamline of the SOLEIL synchrotron (France). This new technique (Martin et al. 2013, Quaroni et al. 2015, Yesiltas et al. 2016) allows the 3D analysis of 10-100 µm-sized samples via computed tomography using sets of full field infrared images in the same time leveraging the chemical sensitivity of infrared spectroscopy and thus providing 3D distributions of different mineral phases, water, organics, etc. at the µm scale. It is complementary to X-ray micro-tomography (Tsuchiyama et al. 2011, 2013), and has the advantage of being non-destructive and comparable to astronomical observations of small bodies’ surfaces. The Itokawa dust particles collected by Hayabusa-1 offer a unique opportunity to apply this technique to extraterrestrial samples. 3D correlation between different mineral phases, and a description of the shape, fractures, and grain boundaries will be obtained. Investigating the assembly of the different phases will allow to understand the early stages of accretion and evolution of planetary materials. Finally, performing FTIR micro-tomography on Hayabusa-1 particles, will be an important step in view of the sample return of dust particles from asteroid Ryugu by the Hayabusa-2 mission. FTIR micro-tomography can thus provide a starting point of an analytical sequence, going from less towards more destructive techniques. This proposal is part of a larger program of analysis of extraterrestrial material through micro-tomography, which will also include ordinary chondrites, carbonaceous chondrites, and several IDPs from the NASA collection.

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