Intact hypervelocity particle capture in aerogel in the laboratory

We have investigated in the laboratory the capture in aerogel of soda glass and olivine particles travelling at approximately 5.km s-1. Projectile sizes cover the range 75–250 μm. We report upon the penetration depth, hole size, spallation area and the fraction of the incident projectile that is captured. The data shows large scatter, although some trends are evident. We conclude that in such impacts intact capture is possible, although it would be difficult from the impact features to deduce the original projectile size to better than a factor of two.