The aim of the project is to study what happens to biological and organic materials captured by a passing spacecraft at speeds of 1 and 5 km/s.

我们将使用光气枪来重现撞击，然后用各种实验技术研究结果。我们这样做是为了帮助确定在美国建造的仪器，这些仪器将飞往土卫二执行任务。这位博士生将在这项工作中起主要作用。背景：土卫二是土星的卫星，它的表面是冰，表面下是液态水的海洋。由于内部压力的作用，冰层上出现了裂缝，人们观察到水柱向太空喷发。类似地，木星的卫星木卫二也有冰冷的表面，地下海洋和羽流（偶尔观察到，可能是由撞击引起的）。美国宇航局的一项任务是在本世纪20年代中期飞越土卫二，并试图对羽流进行采样。如果土卫二上的海洋中存在生命，这一发现将是当代最重要的科学发现之一。即使没有发现生命，这次任务也将是有史以来第一次对另一个世界的海洋进行调查。我们也一直在建造内部有海洋的冰球，并对它们进行撞击，看看它们是如何在撞击过程中分裂并产生羽流的。博士生还将继续这个实验，观察水中的物质如何在羽流中出现，也就是说，羽流的内容如何代表海洋内部？

We will use our light gas gun to recreate impacts and then study the results with a variety of experimental techniques. We will do this to assist in defining the instruments to be built in the US which will fly on a mission to Enceladus. The PhD student will play a major role in this work.Background: The Saturnian moon, Enceladus has an ice surface with a sub-surface ocean of liquid water. Due to internal pressures, cracks appear in the ice and water plumes have been observed erupting into space. Similarly the Jovian moon Europa has an icy surface, sub-surface ocean and plumes (occasionally observed and which may be triggered by impacts). A NASA mission is to fly by Enceladus in the mid-2020s and try to sample the plumes. If life is present in the ocean on Enceladus its discovery will be one of the most important scientific discoveries of the age. Even without life being discovered, this mission will be the first ever investigation of an ocean on another world.We have also been constructing icy spheres with interior oceans and impacting them to see how they break apart and generate plumes during impacts. The PhD student will also continue this and see how materials placed in the water subsequently emerge in the plumes, i.e. how representative of the interior ocean are the contents of the plumes?