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Surface of Young Jupiter Family Comet 81P/Wild 2: View from the Stardust Spacecraft
Donald E. Brownlee,1*Friedrich Horz,2Ray L. Newburn,3Michael Zolensky,2Thomas C. Duxbury,3Scott Sandford,4Zdenek Sekanina,2Peter Tsou,3Martha S. Hanner,5Benton C. Clark,6Simon F. Green,7Jochen Kissel8
Images taken by the Stardust mission during its flyby of 81P/Wild2 show the comet to be a 5-kilometer oblate body covered withremarkable topographic features, including unusual circularfeatures that appear to be impact craters. The presence of high-angleslopes shows that the surface is cohesive and self-supporting.The comet does not appear to be a rubble pile, and its roundedshape is not directly consistent with the comet being a fragmentof a larger body. The surface is active and yet it retains ancientterrain. Wild 2 appears to be in the early stages of its degradationphase as a small volatile-rich body in the inner solar system.
1 Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. 2 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX 77058, USA. 3 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109–8099, USA. 4 NASA Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, CA 94035–1000, USA. 5 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003–9291, USA. 6 Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO, 80201, USA. 7 Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute, Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK. 8 Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie, 37191 Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany.
* To whom correspondence should addressed. E-mail: brownlee{at}astro.washington.edu
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