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Update on Automated Classification of Interplanetary Dust ParticlesEvery year, the Earth accretes about 40,000 tons of extraterrestrial material less than 1 mm in size on its surface. These dust particles originate from active comets, from impacts between asteroids and may also be coming from interstellar space for the very small particles. Since 1981, NASA Jonhson Space Center (JSC) has been systematically collecting the dust from Earth's strastosphere by airborne collectors and gathered them into "Cosmic Dust Catalogs". In those catalogs, a preliminary analysis of the dust particles based on SEM images, some geological characteristics and X-ray energy-dispersive spectrometry (EDS) composition is compiled. Based on those properties, the IDPs are classified into four main groups: C (Cosmic), TCN (Natural Terrestrial Contaminant), TCA (Artificial Terrestrial Contaminant) and AOS (Aluminium Oxide Sphere). Nevertheless, 20% of those particles remain ambiguously classified. Lasue et al. presented a methodology to help automatically classify the particles published in the catalog 15 based on their EDS spectra and nonlinear multivariate projections (as shown in Fig. 1). This work allowed to relabel 155 particles out of the 467 particles in catalog 15 and reclassify some contaminants as potential cosmic dusts. Further analyses of three such particles indicated their probable cosmic origin. The current work aims to bring complementary information to the automatic classification of IDPs to improve identification criteria.
Document ID
20180002584
Acquisition Source
Johnson Space Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Maroger, I. (Research Inst. in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) Toulouse, France)
Lasue, J. (Research Inst. in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) Toulouse, France)
Zolensky, M. (NASA Johnson Space Center Houston, TX, United States)
Date Acquired
April 27, 2018
Publication Date
March 19, 2018
Subject Category
Space Sciences (General)
Report/Patent Number
JSC-E-DAA-TN51921
Meeting Information
Meeting: Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
Location: The Woodlands, TX
Country: United States
Start Date: March 19, 2018
End Date: March 23, 2018
Sponsors: Lunar and Planetary Inst.
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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