PDS: The Planetary Atmospheres NodePlanetary Atmospheres
Cover Page/Proposal Summary
ROSS-00 NRA 00-OSS-01
Date Due: 4/28/2000
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This proposal shall be used and disclosed for evaluation purposes only, and a copy of this Government notice shall be applied to any reproduction or abstract thereof. Any authorized restrictive notices that the submitter places on this proposal shall also be strictly complied with. Disclosure of this proposal for any reason outside the Government evaluation purposes shall be made only to the extent authorized by the Government. |
| Proposal Type: New Proposal |
| Proposal Category: Comets |
| Major Equipment Proposal? No |
| Do you intend to submit an Education/Public Outreach (E/PO) proposal? No |
| Proposal Title: |
| Physical and Dynamical Properties of Dust in Comet Hale-Bopp |
| Abbreviated Proposal Title: |
| Properties of Dust in Comet Hale-Bopp |
| Principal Investigator: |
| Dr. Martha Hanner Mail Stop 183-501 Jet Propulsion Lab. 4800 Oak Grove Drive Pasadena, CA 91109-8099 Phone: 818-354-4100 Fax: 818-393-4605 E-mail: msh@scn1.jpl.nasa.gov |
| Signature | Date |
| _____________________________________ | ____________ |
| Co-Investigators and Collaborators: | |||
| Type | Name | Affiliation | |
| Sci Co-I | Dr. Zdenek Sekanina | JPL | zs@sek.jpl.nasa.gov |
| Sci Collab | Dr. Thomas L. Hayward | NOAO | thayward@gemini.edu |
Proposal Summary:
The overall objective of this investigation is to combine the approaches of infrared/optical and morphological analyses of comet Hale-Bopp in order to extract the maximum information about the physical properties of the dust and nucleus and the process of dust ejection and subsequent motion in the coma. The investigation takes advantage of a unique infrared data set that provides spatially resolved information about the dust composition and size. This investigation will: (a)Gain greater insight into the process of dust ejection from active regions on the rotating nucleus (b)Improve our understanding of the relationship between dust physical properties and coma morphology (c) Understand the silicate mineralogy of the dust (d)Constrain the dust size distribution and production rate. Our existing Monte Carlo image simulation code is modified to compute the loci of particles as a function of ejection velocity and beta, the ratio of the force of solar radiation pressure to the force of solar gravity, for a size distribution of particles, then compute the thermal emission at each spatial location for quantitative comparison with the infrared images and spatially resolved 8-13 micron spectra. The legacy of this investigation will be a deeper understanding of the physical properties of comet dust and the dust ejection processes from a comet nucleus. This research is relevant to NASA's mission by (a)improving our understanding of primitive bodies in the solar system (composition, heterogeneity, physical structure, mass loss) (b)supporting future NASA missions to comets and ESA's Rosetta mission, in which NASA has an interest, by defining the dust environment for mission planning (c) allowing comparison of dust properties in an unusually active comet with dust samples to be returned from comet P/Wild 2 by NASA's STARDUST mission.
Certification of Compliance with Applicable Executive Orders and U.S. Code
By submitting the proposal identified in this Cover Sheet/Proposal Summary in response to this NRA or AO, the Authorizing Official of the proposing institution (or the individual proposer if there is no proposing institution) as identified below:
Willful provision of false information in this proposal and/or its supporting documents, or in reports required under an ensuing award, is a criminal offense (U.S. Code, Title 18, Section 1001).
