INFRARED, UV/VIS AND RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY OF COMET WILD-2 SAMPLES

The Stardust spacecraft collected dust samples of the Kuiper belt comet 81P Wild-2 in aerogel and returned them to Earth January 15, 2006. Preliminary examination (PE) of the collected dust will include teams focused on mineralogy [1], chemical composition [2], isotopic measure-ments [3], organic analysis [4], cratering [5] and spectroscopic properties. The main PE science goals are to provide an initial charac-terization of the returned samples with an emphasis on the capture process and its ef-fects on the samples, a comparison of Star-dust samples to other meteoritic materials, and the abundance of presolar materials in the Stardust samples. The science objectives of the Spectros-copy team are to obtain spectroscopic data on Stardust particles through infrared (IR), UV/Vis and Raman measurements of parti-cles in aerogel, extracted particles, keystones, and microtome thin sections. These data will be used to answer fundamental science ques-tions about the nature of the samples, but will also serve as preliminary mineralogical data to guide follow-on measurements that will be performed in the other preliminary examina-tion teams. Because of their non-destructive nature, these spectroscopic measurements will occur early in the PE.