The Heidelberg Dust Accelerator: Investigating Hypervelocity Particle Impacts

Details The Heidelberg Dust Accelerator: Investigating Hypervelocity Particle Impacts The Heidelberg Dust Accelerator: Investigating Hypervelocity Particle Impacts

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufm.p31b1524m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #P31B-1524

Physics

[2129] Interplanetary Physics / Interplanetary Dust, [6015] Planetary Sciences: Comets And Small Bodies / Dust, [6297] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

Investigating the dynamical and physical properties of cosmic dust can reveal a great deal of information about both the dust and its many sources. Over recent years several spacecraft (e.g. Cassini, Stardust, Galileo) have successfully characterised interstellar, interplanetary and circumplanetary dust using a variety of techniques, including in situ analyses and sample return. Charge, mass, and velocity measurements of the dust are performed either directly (induced charge signals) or indirectly (mass and velocity from impact ionisation signals or crater morphology) and allow the reconstruction of dust orbits. Dust compositional information may be obtained via either impact ionisation time of flight mass spectra or, in rare cases, direct sample return. The accurate and reliable interpretation of collected spacecraft data requires a comprehensive programme of terrestrial instrument calibration. This process involves accelerating suitable solar system analogue dust particles to hypervelocity speeds in the laboratory, an activity performed at the Max Planck Institut für Kernphysik in Heidelberg, Germany. Here a 2 MV Van de Graaff accelerator electrostatically accelerates charged micron and submicron-sized dust particles to speeds in excess of 100 km s-1. Recent advances in dust production and processing have allowed solar system analogue dust particles (silicates and other minerals) to be coated with a thin conductive shell, enabling them to be charged and accelerated. Refinements and upgrades to the beamline instrumentation and electronics now allow for the reliable selection of particles at velocities of 1--100 km s-1 and with diameters between 0.05 μ m and 5 μ m. This ability to select particles for subsequent impact studies based on their charges, masses or velocities is provided by a Particle Selection Unit (PSU). The PSU contains a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), capable of monitoring in real time the particles' speeds and charges, and is controlled remotely by a custom, platform independent, software package. The new control instrumentation and electronics, together with the wide range of accelerable particle types, allow the controlled investigation of hypervelocity impact phenomena across a hitherto unobtainable range of impact parameters.

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