The intern will correlate temporal changes with known areas of volcanic activity and will chronicle the activity of these volcanic areas from IR observations in the literature. Then, using the laboratory spectra supplied by Wagner et al. The laboratory dataset includes reflectance spectra of terrestrial, lunar, and meteoritic powders and frosts, and software to model mixing is currently being written. In this project the intern will develop models of increasing complexity that describe the range of possible configurations of ice deposits at the lunar south pole. A mathematical modeling approach will be defined using various assumptions about ice accumulation rate and regolith turnover due to impact gardening and experiments that demonstrate critical parameters will be designed.
Sulfur is an important element, found in all galactic environments.
There is a huge number of different sulfide minerals, but each has its own well-determined stability conditions. This means that, if we can determine which sulfides are present in a given sample, we can establish important physical-chemical constraints on the early solar system, giving us a better view of processes like planet formation and subsequent evolution. The situation is easier for the type 3 chondritic meteorites for which scanning electron microscope and electron microprobe analyses will suffice. We have obtained artificially produced sulfides from experimental studies performed by Dante Lauretta and Bruce Fegley, our collaborators at Washington University. These samples result from the first realistic attempt to duplicate sulfide growth in the solar nebula in the laboratory, and promise a lot of surprises.