Meyer Instruments and Image-Pro
Plus Assist
Analysis of NASA Stardust Samples
Image-Pro Plus user, Thomas See is a Principal Scientist (Planetary
Geologist) / Project Manager with Barrios Technology. Barrios
Technology is one of the six team member contractors under the Engineering
& Science Contract at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston,
Texas. See supports the ARES (Astromaterials Research &
Exploration Sciences) Directorate at JSC (http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/).
See, a member of the Stardust Science Team located at the JSC is using
Image-Pro Plus
software to acquire, manage, manipulate, and merge images obtained via a
custom scanning system created to support NASA™s Stardust sample return
mission.
Stardust Science Team from left to right: Dr. John Bradley, Dr. Fred
Hörz, Dr. Scott Sandford, Dr. Don Brownlee, Dr. Lindsay Keller,
Thomas H. See, Dr. Peter Tsou, Dr. George Flynn, and Dr. Andrew Westphal.
Not pictured: Dr. Mike Zolensky, Dr. Kevin McKeegan, Christopher Snead
and Keiko Messenger.
The Stardust Mission
On January 2nd of 2004,
the Stardust spacecraft flew through the coma of comet Wild-2 within 140
miles of the cometary nucleus and collected dust samples that emanate from
the comets surface. Stardust and the recently returned Genesis
mission represent the first extraterrestrial samples returned to Earth
since the last Apollo mission in 1972.
The main objective of the Stardust mission is to capture cometary
samples and interstellar dust. To collect particles without damaging them,
Stardust uses a substance called aerogel. Aerogel is a silicon-based solid
with a porous, sponge-like structure in which 99.8 percent of the volume
is empty space. Since aerogel is mostly transparent, scientists will use
these tracks to find the tiny particles.
Artist rendering of the Stardust encounter with Comet Wild-2
Image courtesy of the Stardust Outreach Office
The Stardust mission is especially important since the common
theory is that comets represent pristine, ancient materials that were left
over from the formation of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years
ago. The Stardust spacecraft is scheduled to return to Earth around
3:00 am Utah time on January 15, 2006 at the Utah Test & Training
Range (UTTR).
Stardust image of Comet Wild-2
Image courtesy of the Stardust Outreach Office
Analyzing Stardust Samples
Following recovery of the Stardust
spacecraft, its precious cargo will be flown back to Houston to be opened
in the newly constructed Class 100 Stardust Laboratory cleanroom located
at the JSC. See and the Stardust Science Team plan to scan the
returned aerogel samples to document their overall condition and to
determine which aerogel tiles to remove from the collector in support of
the Scientific Preliminary Examination Team (PET). The PET group -
of which See is a team member -- is charged with extracting some six to
twelve cometary particles to provide mineralogical and chemical
information to scientists concerning the types of particles captured via
the Stardust mission. The rational is to extract as few particles as
practical in order to provide the scientific community with enough
information so that they can make intelligent sample requests for detailed
research studies of these cometary particles.
A scanning system will be used to scan the aerogel collectors at high
resolution for the locations of cometary particle penetrations and
impacts. The overall Stardust sample collector is slightly larger
than the head of a tennis racket and is divided into 132 individual
cells, each cell holding one 2x4x3 cm aerogel tile.
Backup flight collector tray from the Stardust mission.
The scanning system consists of high-precision, Texonics
positioning devices (X & Y axes) and an MZ16-A Leica Stereo Zoom
Microscope (Z-axis), both of which are controlled by a Dell computer
system. The system resides on a floating vibration-isolation,
Newport optical bench.
The positioning system, microscope, and Image-Pro Plus software are
controlled by Aardvark, a custom application developed by Matt Batchelor
of Meyer Instruments (the Leica microscope distributor in Houston, Texas;
http://www.meyerinst.com/).
This Windows-based application allows See and the Stardust Science Team to
set-up small or large areas for investigation and automatically images
these areas at any magnification that the microscope system will
handle.
Stardust sample scanning system.
 
Scanning aerogel
The system will automatically acquire and store the images, and then
move on to the next frame to repeat the process until the defined area has
been completely imaged. After the scanning and imaging is completed,
See then uses Image-Pro Plus to merge the individual images into an
overall mosaic of the scanned area.
The ability to use Image-Pros built-in tools to sequence and merge the
images into an overall mosaic of the area has worked beautifully and has
provided us with some really nice images of both our pre-recovery test
samples, as well as the materials returned last fall from the Genesis
mission, said See.
63 aerogel images are tiled together using Image-Pro Plus.
The merged view of the tiled aerogel images.
Although I do not claim to know how to use all of the features of
Image-Pro Plus, See stated, it is making our jobs easier by interfacing
with the hardware and other software applications to acquire the images in
an automated fashion, speeding up the overall documentation process.
For more information about the Stardust mission, visit http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/
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