PCA-1 Phobos Captured Asteroid

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Simulant Name: PCA-1 Phobos Captured Asteroid
Availability: Not Available
Fidelity: Basic
Developed By: University of Central Florida
Available From: N/A
Publications: Cannon, K. M. et al. (2018), New High Fidelity Martian and Phobos Regolith Simulants: Enabling Tools for Exploring the Mars System and ISRU Development. Lunar and Planetary Science Conference XLIX, Abstract #2086.

The Phobos Captured Asteroid simulant has been developed at the University of Central Florida as part of ongoing work to investigate physical properties of Phobos surface materials. It is paired with PGI-1, and the two simulants reflect the two leading theories for the formation of Phobos: (1) a captured C- or D-type asteroid, or (2) a debris disc from a giant impact composed of part carbonaceous asteroid, part Mars mantle.

PCA-1 is based on the mineralogy of carbonaceous chondrites. Because of a lack of constraints, we chose to base this simulant on the UCF/DSI CI chondrite simulant for simplicity. It is possible that Phobos is more similar to a C2 ungrouped chondrite like Tagish Lake, but this would not significantly change the mineralogy.

The simulant was created in the same way as our CI-based asteroid simulant, by mixing the individual minerals wet and then crushing the dried clumps into a regolith-like particle size distribution. The <25 μm size fraction was sieved out, consistent with Phobos where this fraction is likely winnowed out by solar wind interactions.

We do not currently have plans to mass-produce this simulant.

Images

Photograph of the PCA-1 simulant: