An experimental study on the decomposition of organic matters in the early solar system by impact-generated super critical water

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25871212
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Solid earth and planetary physics; Geochemistry/Cosmochemistry
• Research Institution: Chiba Institute of Technology
• Principal Investigator: Kurosawa Kosuke 千葉工業大学, 惑星探査研究センター, 研究員 (80616433)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 高速度衝突 / 氷衛星 / 氷微惑星 / 二段式水素ガス銃 / 二段式軽ガス銃 / 衝突蒸発 / 化学反応 / 質量分析

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We constructed a new experimental system to investigate the processes of shock vaporization and subsequent chemical reactions in an open system using targets including water ice. A new experimental chamber with a cooling stage down to 170 K and with a quadruple mass spectrometer was newly made. The chamber was set to the downrange of the two-stage light-gas gun placed at Planetary Exploration Research Center of Chiba Institute of Technology. As the first step of research development, we conducted hypervelocity impact experiments with pure-water-ice targets. We confirmed that impact-generated water vapor can be detected with a high signal-to-noise ratio. The developed experimental procedure is expected to be applied directly to a more complex target material, that is a mixture of water-organics-silicate minerals, with a minor modification.

Free Research Field

惑星科学