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We present pre-perihelion infrared 8 to 31 micron spectrophotometric andimaging observations of comet C/2012 K1 (Pan-STARRS), a dynamically new OortCloud comet, conducted with NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for InfraredAstronomy (SOFIA) facility (+FORCAST) in 2014 June. As a "new" comet (firstinner solar system passage), the coma grain population may be extremelypristine, unencumbered by a rime and insufficiently irradiated by the Sun tocarbonize its surface organics. The comet exhibited a weak 10 micron silicatefeature ~1.18 +/- 0.03 above the underlying best-fit 215.32 +/- 0.95 Kcontinuum blackbody. Thermal modeling of the observed spectral energydistribution indicates that the coma grains are fractally solid with a porosityfactor D = 3 and the peak in the grain size distribution, a_peak = 0.6 micron,large. The sub-micron coma grains are dominated by amorphous carbon, with asilicate-to-carbon ratio of 0.80 (+0.25) (- 0.20). The silicate crystallinemass fraction is 0.20 (+0.30) (-0.10), similar to with other dynamically newcomets exhibiting weak 10 micron silicate features. The bolometric dust albedoof the coma dust is 0.14 +/- 0.01 at a phase angle of 34.76 degrees, and theaverage dust production rate, corrected to zero phase, at the epoch of ourobservations was Afrho ~ 5340~cm.

SOFIA Infrared Spectrophotometry of Comet C/2012 K1 (Pan-STARRS)