Jon M. Friedrich

Chelyabinsk airburst, damage assessment, meteorite recovery, and characterization

Deep Impact? On 15 February 2013, the Russian district of Chelyabinsk, with a population of more than 1 million, suffered the impact and atmospheric explosion of a 20-meter-wide asteroid—the largest impact on Earth by an asteroid since 1908. Popova et al. (p. 1069, published online 7 November; see the Perspective by Chapman) provide a comprehensive description of this event and of the body that caused it, including detailed information on the asteroid orbit and atmospheric trajectory, damage assessment, and meteorite recovery and characterization. A detailed study of a recent asteroid impact provides an opportunity to calibrate the damage caused by these rare events. [Also see Perspective by Chapman] The asteroid impact near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on 15 February 2013 was the largest airburst on Earth since the 1908 Tunguska event, causing a natural disaster in an area with a population exceeding one million. Because it occurred in an era with modern consumer electronics, field sensors, and laboratory techniques, unprecedented measurements were made of the impact event and the meteoroid that caused it. Here, we document the account of what happened, as understood now, using comprehensive data obtained from astronomy, planetary science, geophysics, meteorology, meteoritics, and cosmochemistry and from social science surveys. A good understanding of the Chelyabinsk incident provides an opportunity to calibrate the event, with implications for the study of near-Earth objects and developing hazard mitigation strategies for planetary protection.

Radar-Enabled Recovery of the Sutter’s Mill Meteorite, a Carbonaceous Chondrite Regolith Breccia

The Meteor That Fell to Earth In April 2012, a meteor was witnessed over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. Jenniskens et al. (p. 1583) used a combination of photographic and video images of the fireball coupled with Doppler weather radar images to facilitate the rapid recovery of meteorite fragments. A comprehensive analysis of some of these fragments shows that the Sutters Mill meteorite represents a new type of carbonaceous chondrite, a rare and primitive class of meteorites that contain clues to the origin and evolution of primitive materials in the solar system. The unexpected and complex nature of the fragments suggests that the surfaces of C-class asteroids, the presumed parent bodies of carbonaceous chondrites, are more complex than previously assumed. Analysis of this rare meteorite implies that the surfaces of C-class asteroids can be more complex than previously assumed. Doppler weather radar imaging enabled the rapid recovery of the Sutter’s Mill meteorite after a rare 4-kiloton of TNT–equivalent asteroid impact over the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in northern California. The recovered meteorites survived a record high-speed entry of 28.6 kilometers per second from an orbit close to that of Jupiter-family comets (Tisserand’s parameter = 2.8 ± 0.3). Sutter’s Mill is a regolith breccia composed of CM (Mighei)–type carbonaceous chondrite and highly reduced xenolithic materials. It exhibits considerable diversity of mineralogy, petrography, and isotope and organic chemistry, resulting from a complex formation history of the parent body surface. That diversity is quickly masked by alteration once in the terrestrial environment but will need to be considered when samples returned by missions to C-class asteroids are interpreted.

Quantitative methods for three-dimensional comparison and petrographic description of chondrites

X-ray computed tomography can be used to generate three-dimensional (3D) volumetric representations of chondritic meteorites. One of the challenges of using collected X-ray tomographic data is the extraction of useful data for 3D petrographic analysis or description. Here, I examine computer-aided quantitative 3D texture metrics that can be used for the classification of chondritic meteorites. These quantitative techniques are extremely useful for discriminating between chondritic materials, but yield little information on the 3D morphology of chondrite components. To investigate the morphology of chondrite minerals such as Fe(Ni) metal and related sulfides, the homology descriptors known as Betti numbers, are examined. Both methodologies are illustrated with theoretical discussion and examples. Betti numbers may be valuable for examining the nature of metal-silicate structural changes within chondrites with increasing degrees of metamorphism.

Photophoretic Strength on Chondrules. 2. Experiment

Photophoretic motion can transport illuminated particles in protoplanetary disks. In a previous paper we focused on the modeling of steady state photophoretic forces based on the compositions derived from tomography and heat transfer. Here, we present microgravity experiments which deviate significantly from the steady state calculations of the first paper. The experiments on average show a significantly smaller force than predicted with a large variation in absolute photophoretic force and in the direction of motion with respect to the illumination. Time-dependent modeling of photophoretic forces for heat-up and rotation show that the variations in strength and direction observed can be well explained by the particle reorientation in the limited experiment time of a drop tower experiment. In protoplanetary disks, random rotation subsides due to gas friction on short timescales and the results of our earlier paper hold. Rotation has a significant influence in short duration laboratory studies. Observing particle motion and rotation under the influence of photophoresis can be considered as a basic laboratory analog experiment to Yarkovsky and YORP effects.

PHOTOPHORETIC STRENGTH ON CHONDRULES. 1. MODELING

Photophoresis is a physical process that transports particles in optically thin parts of protoplanetary disks, especially at the inner edge and at the optical surface. To model the transport and resulting effects in detail, it is necessary to quantify the strength of photophoresis for different particle classes as a fundamental input. Here, we explore photophoresis for a set of chondrules. The composition and surface morphology of these chondrules were measured by X-ray tomography. Based on the three-dimensional models, heat transfer through illuminated chondrules was calculated. The resulting surface temperature map was then used to calculate the photophoretic strength. We found that irregularities in particle shape and variations in composition induce variations in the photophoretic force. These depend on the orientation of a particle with respect to the light source. The variation of the absolute value of the photophoretic force on average over all chondrules is 4.17%. The deviation between the direction of the photophoretic force and illumination is 3.?0 ? 1.?5. The average photophoretic force can be well approximated and calculated analytically assuming a homogeneous sphere with a volume equivalent mean radius and an effective thermal conductivity. We found an analytic expression for the effective thermal conductivity. The expression depends on the two main phases of a chondrule and decreases with the amount of fine-grained devitrified, plagioclase-normative mesostasis up to factor of three. For the chondrule sample studied (Bjurb?le chondrite), we found a dependence of the photophoretic force on chondrule size.

Exploration of synchrotron Mössbauer microscopy with micrometer resolution: forward and a new backscattering modality on natural samples

New aspects of synchrotron Mössbauer microscopy have been reported, including micrometer spatial resolution, forward as well as backscattering geometry, and the ability to measure samples with natural isotopic abundance, such as meteorites.

Shock-induced mobilization of metal and sulfide in planetesimals: Evidence from the Buck Mountains 005 (L6 S4) dike-bearing chondrite

Abstract The conditions under which metal cores formed in silicate-metal planetary bodies in the early Solar System are poorly known. We studied the Buck Mountains 005 (L6) chondrite with serial sectioning, X‑ray computed microtomography, and optical and electron microscopy to better understand how metal and troilite were redistributed as a result of a moderately strong (shock stage S4) shock event, as an example of how collisional processes could have contributed to differentiation. The chondrite was recovered on Earth in multiple small pieces, some of which have a prominent, 1.5-3 mm wide holocrystalline shock melt dike that forms a jointed, sheet-like structure, as well as an associated shock vein network. The data suggest that metal and troilite within the dike were melted, sheared, and transported as small parcels of melt, with metal moving out of the dike and along branching veins to become deposited as coarser nodules and veins within largely unmelted host. Troilite also mobilized but partly separated from metal to become embedded as finer-grained particles, vein networks, and emulsions intimately intergrown with silicates. Rock textures and metal compositions imply that shock melts cooled rapidly against relatively cool parent body materials, but that low-temperature annealing occurred by deep burial within the parent body. Our results demonstrate the ability of shock processes to create larger metal accumulations in substantially unmelted meteorite parent bodies, and they have implications for the formation of iron meteorites and for core formation within colliding planetesimals.

Image Analysis of 2D X-ray Intensity Maps: Element Abundances, Mineralogy, and Modal Analysis of Meteorites

X-ray mapping is increasingly used in the geological sciences for qualitative observations of textures, mineral zoning, and element distribution among rock components [1-4]. We combine mapping with an aggressive program of image analysis in deepening our understanding of the early solar system through the analysis of chondritic meteorites [5, 6]. Chondrites are “sediments” that accreted in the earliest solar system into planetesimals now represented by objects in the asteroid belt. They accumulated hightemperature inclusions (igneous rock droplets or aggregations) with a low-temperature fine-grained mineral matrix including pre-solar grains and macromolecular carbon [7]. We seek to measure the relative abundances, modal mineralogies, and chemical compositions of these components with such different thermal histories, to higher accuracy than has been done previously.