The European Space Exposure Facility

Details The European Space Exposure Facility The European Space Exposure Facility

Mar 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996lpi....27..113b&link_type=abstract

Lunar and Planetary Science, volume 27, page 113

Mathematics

Logic

Facility: Collecting, Interplanetary Dust Particles, Particles: Collection

Scientific paper

Following the pioneering collection of Interplanetary Dust Particles (IDPs) in deep sea sediments and in the stratosphere, space collections started in the early 80s. They consisted in the return to the Earth of surfaces exposed during long durations to space, at altitude 300 to 500 km (e.g. : LDEF, ARAGATZ-MIR, TICCE-EURECA-1. In this context, the KMP/COMET experiment, proposed in 1982 by the French team has been accepted in the framework of the Soviet-French space cooperation program. The idea was to install collectors inside hermetic boxes, maintained in vacuum from the lab to space and then back from space to the lab; to have these boxes mounted outside a space station, orbiting the Earth; to have the capability of chosing the date and duration of the collection, that is to open and close each box at selected periods. In February '94, it has been proposed to fly an improved version of this instrument, slightly modified to accomodate a variety of instruments, as part of the payload of the Euromir 95 mission, negociated between ESA and NPO Energya. Renamed as the European Space Exposure Facility (ESEF), it carries several PI experiments designed to analyse in real time some parameters of the encountered particles (number density, trajectory, velocity and distribution), to expose surfaces to the space environment, and to collect material, both of terrestrial and extraterrestrial origin, to be brought back to the Earth at the end of the mission (29 February 1996). The relevant goal of the mission is the characterization of the collected grains: flux distributions, elemental, isotopic, molecular and mineralogic compositions.

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