Mineral Chemistry of MUSES-C Regio Inferred from Analysis of Dust Particles Collected from the First- and Second-Touchdown Sites on Asteroid Itokawa.
2014
The mineralogy and mineral chemistry of Itokawa dust particles captured during the first and second
touchdownson the MUSES-C Regio were characterized by synchrotron- radiation X-ray diffraction and field-emission
electron microprobeanalysis. Olivine and low- and high-Ca
pyroxene,
plagioclase, and merrillite compositions of the first-
touchdownparticles are similar to those of the second-
touchdownparticles. The two
touchdownsites are separated by approximately 100 meters and therefore the similarity suggests that MUSES-C Regio is covered with dust particles of uniform mineral chemistry of LL chondrites. Quantitative compositional properties of 48 dust particles, including both first- and second-
touchdownsamples, indicate that dust particles of MUSES-C Regio have experienced prolonged thermal metamorphism, but they are not fully equilibrated in terms of chemical composition. This suggests that MUSES-C particles were heated in a single asteroid at different temperatures. During slow cooling from a peak temperature of approximately 800 °C, chemical compositions of
plagioclaseand K-feldspar seem to have been modified: Ab and Or contents changed during cooling, but An did not. This compositional modification is reproduced by a numerical simulation that modeled the cooling process of a 50 km sized Itokawa parent asteroid. After cooling, some particles have been heavily impacted and heated, which resulted in heterogeneous distributions of Na and K within
plagioclasecrystals. Impact-induced chemical modification of
plagioclasewas verified by a comparison to a shock vein in the Kilabo LL6
ordinary chondritewhere Na-
K distributionsof
plagioclasehave been disturbed.
Keywords:
-
Correction
-
Source
-
Cite
-
Save
36
References
17
Citations
NaN
KQI