The aim of the project is to study what happens to biological and organic materials captured by a passing spacecraft at speeds of 1 and 5 km/s.

We will use our light gas gun to recreate impacts and then study the results with a variety of experimental techniques. We will do this to assist in defining the instruments to be built in the US which will fly on a mission to Enceladus. The PhD student will play a major role in this work.

Background: The Saturnian moon, Enceladus has an ice surface with a sub-surface ocean of liquid water. Due to internal pressures, cracks appear in the ice and water plumes have been observed erupting into space. Similarly the Jovian moon Europa has an icy surface, sub-surface ocean and plumes (occasionally observed and which may be triggered by impacts). A NASA mission is to fly by Enceladus in the mid-2020s and try to sample the plumes. If life is present in the ocean on Enceladus its discovery will be one of the most important scientific discoveries of the age. Even without life being discovered, this mission will be the first ever investigation of an ocean on another world.

We have also been constructing icy spheres with interior oceans and impacting them to see how they break apart and generate plumes during impacts. The PhD student will also continue this and see how materials placed in the water subsequently emerge in the plumes, i.e. how representative of the interior ocean are the contents of the plumes?