Project 003 Description:The student will perform laboratory studies of sublimation into vacuum of mixtures of cometary volatiles at low temperatures and pressures relevant to
objects transitioning from the Kuiper belt to short period comets. The student will do this by vapor depositing materials onto a quartz crystal microbalance
housed within an ultra-high vacuum chamber and cooled to extremely low temperatures with a closed cycle helium refrigerator. They will collect spectral
and sublimation flux data and process the data to obtain measurements of temperature dependent vapor pressures, enthalpy of sublimation, and solid
state diffusion coefficients. These parameters are the essential inputs to models of the evolution of volatiles in the interiors of primitive bodies responding
to temperature changes resulting from orbital evolution. We estimate that substantial progress can be made with 10 hours per week FTE over two
semesters by a qualified undergraduate.