Dust Impact Sensors for small spacecrafts for deep space missions

Abstract:

Dust is a ubiquitous component of our galaxy and Solar System. The Earth accumulates roughly 100 tons of space dust each day, in the form of nm to tens of microns particles and up to mm-sized ones. Measurements of dust properties and its population distribution provide important information to space science in modelling the birth and growth of the Solar System. The information gained from studying these small particles has been valuable for improving our understanding of the ongoing physical processes of asteroids, comets, Kuiper Belt objects, and planetary rings. A portion of dust dates back to the birth of the Solar System and a small fraction is interstellar. These particles travel with hypersonic speeds typically in the range 10–70 km/s. Space scientists are interested in characterizing this particle population for various reasons, among them because they provide an accessible sample of a distant astronomical body, are major contributors to the growth of planetary surfaces, and provide information about the origin and dynamics of the early Solar System. On board the Rosetta/ESA space mission, the GIADA Instrument was devoted to the dynamical characterization of the dust. One of the three sub-systems constituting GIADA, the Impact Sensor measured the momentum of individual coma dust particle. We proposed the same instrument concept as GIADA-IS to measure dust particles with different dynamical properties, onboard Comet Interceptor probes and onboard cubesats.