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.

我们将使用我们的光气枪来重现撞击，然后用各种实验技术研究结果。我们将这样做，以帮助确定仪器将在美国建造，将飞往土卫二的使命。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，冰中出现裂缝，并观察到水羽流喷发到太空中。类似地，木卫二有一个冰冷的表面，地下海洋和羽流（偶尔观察到，可能是由撞击触发的）。美国宇航局的一项使命是在20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，它的发现将是这个时代最重要的科学发现之一。即使没有发现生命，这项使命也将是有史以来第一次对另一个世界的海洋进行调查。我们还一直在构建具有内部海洋的冰球，并对它们进行撞击，以了解它们如何在撞击过程中破裂并产生羽流。博士生也将继续这一点，看看如何放置在水中的材料随后出现在羽流，即如何代表海洋内部的羽流的内容？

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?