The geological history of water-rich asteroids: new insights from meteorites and first results from the Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx space missions

When:  Thursday 14^th November at 14.30 (coffee available from 14.00)

Where:  Robert Hooke Seminar Room

Speaker:  Dr Ashley King

Hosted by:  Jack Wright

Abstract:

The nature and origin of volatiles in the terrestrial planets is one of the key open questions in planetary science. A leading idea is that a major fraction of the volatiles species was delivered to the terrestrial planets by water and carbon-rich asteroids that accreted in the outer regions of the solar system. However, the physical and chemical conditions under which these asteroids formed and evolved in the early solar system remains poorly constrained. I will talk about how we are using carbonaceous chondrite meteorites to unravel the complex geological history of primitive water and carbon-rich asteroids and compare our results with new observations of the near-Earth asteroids Ryugu and Bennu, from which the Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx missions are set to return samples.

Speaker Introduction:

Ashley got his PhD from the University of Manchester and his work there used time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) to investigate pre-solar grains. Following his PhD, he was a post-doc at the University of Chicago where he helped to develop a new resonant ionisation mass spectrometry (RIMS) instrument and was involved in the characterisation of contemporary interstellar dust returned by NASA’s Stardust mission. After that he moved back to the UK for a post-doc at the Natural History Museum investigating the formation of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites using spectroscopic techniques. He joined the OU as a lecturer in planetary science in October 2019.