Automatic detection of impact craters on Al foils from the Stardust interstellar dust collector using convolutional neural networks

Bibliographic Details
Title: Automatic detection of impact craters on Al foils from the Stardust interstellar dust collector using convolutional neural networks
Authors: Jaeger, Logan, Butterworth, Anna L., Gainsforth, Zack, Lettieri, Robert, Ardizzone, Augusto, Capraro, Michael, Burchell, Mark, Wozniakiewicz, Penny, Ogliore, Ryan C., De Gregorio, Bradley T., Stroud, Rhonda M., Westphal, Andrew J.
Publication Year: 2021
Collection: Computer Science
Astrophysics
Subject Terms: Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, Computer Science - Machine Learning
More Details: NASA's Stardust mission utilized a sample collector composed of aerogel and aluminum foil to return cometary and interstellar particles to Earth. Analysis of the aluminum foil begins with locating craters produced by hypervelocity impacts of cometary and interstellar dust. Interstellar dust craters are typically less than one micrometer in size and are sparsely distributed, making them difficult to find. In this paper, we describe a convolutional neural network based on the VGG16 architecture that achieves high specificity and sensitivity in locating impact craters in the Stardust interstellar collector foils. We evaluate its implications for current and future analyses of Stardust samples.
Document Type: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1111/maps.13747
Access URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2103.09673
Accession Number: edsarx.2103.09673
Database: arXiv
More Details
DOI:10.1111/maps.13747