Publication Date:
2004-06-19
Description:
We present measurements of the dust particle flux and mass distribution from the Stardust Dust Flux Monitor Instrument (DFMI) throughout the flyby of comet 81P/Wild 2. In the particle mass regime from 10(-14) to 10(-7) kilograms, the spacecraft encountered regions of intense swarms of particles, together with bursts of activity corresponding to clouds of particles only a few hundred meters across. This fine-scale structure can be explained by particle fragmentation. We estimate that 2800 +/- 500 particles of diameter 15 micrometers or larger impacted the aerogel collectors, the largest being approximately 6 x 10(-7) kilograms, which dominates the total collected mass.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Tuzzolino, Anthony J -- Economou, Thanasis E -- Clark, Ben C -- Tsou, Peter -- Brownlee, Donald E -- Green, Simon F -- McDonnell, J A M -- McBride, Neil -- Colwell, Melusine T S H -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Jun 18;304(5678):1776-80.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research, Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, 933 East 56th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15205527" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
*Cosmic Dust
;
Gases
;
*Meteoroids
;
Spacecraft
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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