3,1- 1Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, United States of America (nmo68@nau.edu)
- 2Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States of America (mthompson@purdue.edu))
- 3Amentum, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, United States of America (driss.takir@nasa.gov)
The surfaces of airless bodies in our Solar System are continually altered by processes collectively referred to as space weathering (Chapman 2004; Hapke 2001; Pieters & Noble 2016). Space weathering has the potential to complicate remote sensing efforts that aim to understand the composition and evolution of these bodies. In light of recent remote sensing observations and returned sample analysis that show some asteroids are hydrated, we are conducting experiments on lizardite aimed at understanding how the 3-μm region responds to simulated space weathering.
Our newly operational ultra-high vacuum (UHV) chamber operates at a base pressure of about 10-9 Torr. We have the capability to heat samples up to ~600 C in order to remove weakly bound terrestrial contaminants, such as H2O, while monitoring the reflectance spectrum of our sample. Currently, we can also irradiate our samples with a pulsed laser, which is used to simulate micrometeorite impacts.
As serpentines are a major phase of phyllosilicates found in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites and are therefore expected to be observed on hydrated asteroids, we performed our first weathering experiments using the terrestrial serpentine mineral lizardite. Here we present those results and discuss possible implications in the context on space weathering of airless bodies.
Citations
Chapman, C. R. 2004, Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci., 32, 539
Hapke, B. 2001, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 106, 10039
Pieters, C. M., & Noble, S. K. 2016, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 121, 1865
How to cite: Ozdowski, N., Loeffler, M., Thompson, M., Takir, D., and Emery, J.: Space Weathering Effects on Lizardite, EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2025, Helsinki, Finland, 7–12 Sep 2025, EPSC-DPS2025-394, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc-dps2025-394, 2025.
