The Rosetta mission to comet 67P/C-G revolutionized comet science, but left major questions on the table. Are cometary nuclei primordial or are they collisionally-evolved as predicted by modern theories of planet formation? The CONSERT radar experiment sounded the interior of the nucleus showing it to be transparent to a depth of kilometers at 90 MHz, thus demonstrating the feasibility of a 3D global reflection tomography. The Comet Radar Explorer mission will acquire a dense network of in-phase radar echoes from orbit to obtain a high resolution 3D image. Full wavefield tomography facilitate high quality imaging of the comet interiors, particularly if the comet nucleus is characterized by complex structure and large contrasts of physical properties. Knowledge of the comet shape and all-around orbital radar acquisition enable accurate and computationally-efficient 3D wavefield tomography.

This presentation is part of Minisymposium “MS67 - Advances and new directions in seismic imaging and inversion (3 parts)”
organized by: Mauricio Sacchi (University of Alberta) , Sergey Fomel (University of Texas, Austin) , Laurent Demanet (MIT ) .

Authors:

Paul Sava (Colorado School of Mines)

Keywords:

computed tomography, image reconstruction, inverse problems