Visual observation of meteorite ablation in plasma wind tunnel experiments

Abstract

A set of 28 different meteorites was tested in 32 ablation experiments in the plasma wind tunnel PWK1 at the Institute of Space Systems. All meteorites were exposed to the same flow condition in consecutive experiments. This paper presents the detailed analysis of high-resolution images taken by DSLR cameras during 26 experiments on 22 different meteorites. It is seen that the ablation behavior of the meteorites differs in the way the material melts and flows downstream. While some meteorites appeared more viscous and most material remained connected to the main body, other samples suggest a much lower viscosity as the material was carried downstream and released droplets to the flow. Most droplets of molten material were seen for the two most carbon rich samples from meteorites Murchison and Dhofar 1575. The release of blue colored particles was observed for several meteorites, independent of the viscosity. In contrast to the molten droplets, the blue particles also traveled up to a few millimeters upstream. The abundance of these blue particles is linked to the iron content. Close to no particles or droplets were observed for achondritic samples.