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PI : Fred Jourdan

Title : Collisional history of Asteroid Itokawa using SEM petrography, EBSD, ToF-SIMS, APT, TEM and 40Ar/39Ar dating of dust particles - toward building an age database

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, indicating either a crystallization/cooling age or an impact age for each of the particle. These results will be combined with our previous results (including 3 precise 40Ar/39Ar ages ranging from 2.3 to 4.2 Ga; EBSD, ToF-SIMS and atom probe tomography analyses) obtained so far on six particles 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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