Question: what is the most hardest experiment you have done

Kathryn answered on 7 Nov 2018:

I am still trying to get an experiment to work. So far I have put it on the back burning while I study other projects.

I am trying to impact an internally heated target. In the early solar system, many of the planetary bodies were internally heated due to the break down of unstable elements. This produced heat that prevented the molten material from cooling.

I am interested to see what the impact of a solid body would have with such an internally heated body.

Therefore I am trying to fire a projectile at a target rock that is heated to 1000 degrees C. Pretty simple in theory but in practice, the electronic and the vacuum are not working well together and it takes all day to get the rock up to temperature. I have reached 800 degrees but that is just not hot enough.

So I decided to take a break from that and go to the opposite end and do impacts into ice instead which has its own problems, trying to measure a crater as it is melting is difficult, and I always end up doing these experiments in the summer!!

Great question.

Cheers

Kathryn