Surface Processes in Icy Solar System Objects

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

AST 0506565 Baragiola Dr. Raul Baragiola will perform laboratory research to answer key questions about the surfaces of icy satellites in the outer solar system and about their interaction with energetic radiation and atmospheric species. The intrinsic intellectual value of this experimental research will be achieving insight about fundamental physical-chemistry processes operating in those environments. In addition it will provide physical-chemistry data useful to constraint models and questions posed by recent observations by the Galileo spacecraft and the Hubble Space Telescope and those arising in the CASSINI mission to the Saturnian system. Judged from the multiple findings in the last years, there is a clear likelihood that new phenomena will be uncovered, which is not expected from current models or theories. The broader impacts of the proposed research are the direct implications for understanding comets, ring particles, interstellar grains, and the stability of polar ice on the Moon and Mercury. Furthermore, the studies have applications in diverse areas, such as the remote sensing of ices on Earth, the physics and chemistry of mesospheric ice in the Earth's upper atmosphere, processing of materials by ion and photons, materials science of amorphous materials, radiation effects in biological tissue and exobiology. The research offers excellent education opportunities, resulting from its interdisciplinary character and the use of a wide array of techniques: ion and photon beams, ultrahigh vacuum, cryogenics, mass spectrometry, and optical spectroscopy from the ultraviolet to the infrared. ***