nai

Project Progress

The goal of this project is to evaluate and understand how shock affects the chemistry of simple molecules that may have been delivered to a planet or icy moon via comets, asteroids, and/or interplanetary dust particles. During this past year, we continued laboratory analyses of shocked samples of simple sugars, and we returned to the Experimental Impact Laboratory (EIL) to conduct a set of experiments with the flat-plate accelerator (FPA). This time, we included minerals that mimic meteorite compositions. We are finding that many complex molecules are formed in samples that, prior to the impact shock, contained only the simple sugars. A paper describing these results is currently under review. The staff at the EIL continues to trouble-shoot issues in order to reconfigure the FPA for the ice experiments.

One undergraduate student wrote a senior thesis describing the results of the shock experiments with glycolaldehyde, while another traveled with us to the Johnson Space Center to conduct experiments involving simple molecules in mineral matrices.

Oral and poster conference presentations of this work occurred at the annual meeting of the Michigan Space Grant Consortium (2012), at the American Chemical Society Meeting (2013), at the Stars to Life Conference (2013), at the Albion College Elkin Isaac Student Symposium (April 2013), and during the NASA Astrobiology Institute Workshop Without Walls: Hadean Earth-Moon System (2013).