First Dust Impact Sites

First dust impact, average diameter of 3.84 microns.

Hi Everyone,

We had our first customer come to the accelerator.  Mr. Doug Currie from the University of Maryland was studying dust impacts on samples of polished fused silica glass to see what kind of damage micrometeorite impacts would do to the glass.  After firing about 3000 shots onto a 1" diameter piece of glass, we took the sample to a scanning electron microscope (SEM).  This is one of the craters we found on the surface.  It has an average diameter of 3.84 microns.  The dust we fired at it ranged from 0.4-6 microns in diameter and a velocity of 1-3 km/s.  I'm hoping to get more time with the SEM and a good optical light microscope to get a better idea of what we did to the surface.

Shu