Applicability and Utility of the Astromaterials X-Ray Computed Tomography Laboratory at Johnson Space Center

• Main Authors: Gross, J., Needham, A. W., McCubbin, F. M., Zeigler, R. A., Fries, M. D., Eckley, S. A.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Space Sciences (General); Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20200001908

The Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at NASAs Johnson Space Center is responsible for curating all of NASAs astromaterial sample collections (i.e. Apollo samples, Luna Samples, Antarctic Meteorites, Cosmic Dust Particles, Microparticle Impact Collection, Genesis solar wind atoms, Stardust comet Wild-2 particles, Stardust interstellar particles, and Hayabusa asteroid Itokawa particles) [1-3]. To assist in sample curation and distribution, JSC Curation has recently installed an X-ray computed tomography (XCT) scanner to visualize and characterize samples in 3D. [3] describes the instrumental set-up and the utility of XCT to astromaterials curation. Here we describe some of the current and future projects and illustrate the usefulness of XCT in studying astromaterials.