Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
EPSC Abstracts
Vol. 14, EPSC2020-218, 2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-218
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

CoPhyLab: recent and future experiments - an overview

Bastian Gundlach1, Jürgen Blum1, Dorothea Bischoff1, Noah Molinski1, Anthony Lethuillier1, Christopher Kreuzig1, Clément Feller2, Antoine Pommerol2, Nicolas Thomas2, Erika Kaufmann3, Maria Schweighart3, Günter Kargl3, Holger Sierks4, Carsten Güttler4, Katharina Otto5, David Haack5, Ekkehard Kührt5, Jörg Knollenberg5, Xiaojing Zhang6, and Axel Hagermann7
Bastian Gundlach et al.
  • 1Institut für Geophysik und extraterrestrische Physik, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Mendelssohnstr.3, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany
  • 2Physikalisches Institut, University of Bern, Siedlerstrasse 5, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
  • 3Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Schmiedlstrasse 20, A-8042 Graz, Austria
  • 4Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
  • 5Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Rutherfordstraße 2, 12489 Berlin-Adlershof, Germany
  • 6Department of Space Science, Qianxuesen Laboratory of Space Technology, China
  • 7Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, United Kingdom

CoPhyLab
Laboratory experiments are of major importance to understand the activity of comets and to support future space missions. However, past comet simulation experiments were performed under the assumption that comets are mainly composed of water ice with only a limited amount of dust. In the past years, however, the Rosetta mission has shown that cometary nuclei consist primarily of dust and less volatile materials are present than previously thought. Hence, it is high time to set up a new series of laboratory experiments with the aim to investigate the physics of realistic cometary analogue materials. This task is currently addressed by the CoPhyLab (Comet Physics Laboratory) which is a joint project among different partner institutions. This laboratory aims at studying the physics of cometary analogue materials. This task is approached by first
investigating isolated physical properties in so-called small experiments (S experiments). In a next step, the experiment’s complexity is increased step-by-step by either adding further components to the sample, or by studying several physical properties under different conditions (large experiments, which will be performed in the L chamber). 

S1: the tensile strength of organic materials
The knowledge of the tensile strength of the cometary surface is of key importance to better understand the activity of comets. The tensile strength determines the strain required to detach material from the surface. As organic materials are ubiquitous in space, they could have played an important role during the planet formation process and are most likely incorporated into cometary nuclei. This S experiment campaign provides new measurements on the tensile strength of various granular organic materials. These materials are investigated by the Brazilian Disc Test and the measured values are normalised to a grain size of one micrometer and a volume filling factor of 0.5 for better comparability. The experiments show that the tensile strength of organic materials ranges over four orders of magnitude. Graphite and paraffin have much higher tensile strengths values compared to silica, whereas the tensile strength of coals is very low. This work demonstrates that organic materials are not generally stickier than silicates, or water ice.

S2: gas permeability of analogue materials  
The cometary nucleus is made of water ice, organics and silicateous dust and the ice is trapped inside the matrix of non-volatiles. Hence, the evolving gas has to stream away from its originating region inside the surface layers towards the surface. This work package has the aim to investigate the gas transport mechanisms through porous cometary analogue materials. Therefore, gas flow measurements are performed to investigate the permeability of several materials, which are chosen to mimic cometary surface properties. With these measurements, the gas permeability and the Knudsen diffusion coefficient of the sample materials are obtained. These simulants are tested with respect to different filling heights, packing properties and grain shapes. The gas flow experiments show that the grain size distribution and the packing density of the samples are primarily influencing the permeability of the sample. 

S3: thermal conductivity of analogue materials
Measurements of the thermal properties of analogue materials are essential in interpreting remote sensing data and the findings of in-situ instruments. The thermal properties of the subsurface layers determine the surface temperature of asteroids and comets. The temperature stratification inside planetary object is a key parameter to understand the processing of their interior. This experiment campaign is dedicated to measure the thermal properties of analogue materials. In preparation for these measurements we have set up a small vacuum chamber equipped with an infrared camera and temperature sensors. The samples are illuminated for a short duration by a laser. We then compare the measured temperature profiles with the predictions of a thermophysical model to determine the thermal conductivity of the samples.

S4: ejection of material
When comets approach the Sun, the sublimation pressure will be reached inside the material. If the tensile strength is exceeded by the evolving pressure, the particles can be ejected from the cometary surface and are accelerated. However, the details of the dust dynamics close to the surface are not understood in detail. The idea of this S experiment campaign is to develop an experimental routine to track ejected particles from a sample composed of granular water ice. Therefore, we recorded the power of the illumination, the temperature of the sample and measured the particle trajectories with an high speed camera. Furthermore, the experiments are also simulated by a thermophysical model. Our experiments show that samples composed of pure granular water ice can eject water-ice particles by the pressure build up of water vapour in their interior. Compressed samples posses an higher activity level (ejection events per second) compared to uncompressed samples. The ejected particles have a non-zero initial velocity which is most probably caused by a very fast acceleration of the particles before the first data point is recorded by the camera.

The L chamber
The core of this project is the realisation of a comet simulation chamber which will be capable to utilise multiple instruments to monitor and measure the sample properties before, during and after the experiment campaigns. This chamber will be used to perform long duration experiments at low temperatures and low pressures. At this stage (end of June, 2020), the chamber is already installed in place and is vacuum tight, the cooling shield is assembled and the sample carrier cart as well as the self-made glove box are ready to use. The next steps comprise the integration of the cooling shield and the main cooling system. We foresee to run the first experiments in approximately six weeks from now. During the EPSC conference we will provide a technical overview of the chamber and we will present the first experiments performed in the L chamber.

Acknowledgements
This work was carried out in the framework of the CoPhyLab project funded by the D-A-CH programme (GU 1620/3-1 and BL 298/26-1 / SNF 200021E 177964 / FWF I 3730-N36). DB and JB thank the Deutsches Zentrum f\"ur Luft- und Raumfahrt for support under grant 50WM1846.

How to cite: Gundlach, B., Blum, J., Bischoff, D., Molinski, N., Lethuillier, A., Kreuzig, C., Feller, C., Pommerol, A., Thomas, N., Kaufmann, E., Schweighart, M., Kargl, G., Sierks, H., Güttler, C., Otto, K., Haack, D., Kührt, E., Knollenberg, J., Zhang, X., and Hagermann, A.: CoPhyLab: recent and future experiments - an overview, Europlanet Science Congress 2020, online, 21 Sep–9 Oct 2020, EPSC2020-218, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-218, 2020.