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Experiment Title: Attempt at Dust Debris Collection with Stacked Detectors

Original Principal Investigator(s): Mandeville, Dr. Jean-Claude - Invest. Role: Original, Mandeville, Dr. Jean-Claude - Invest. Role: Present, Mandeville, Dr. Jean-Claude - Invest. Role: Present, Mandeville, Dr. Jean-Claude - Invest. Role: Original,

Since the beginning of space exploration, a significant amount of data have been gathered on micrometeoroids. Since the first NASA U-2 flight collection in 1974, the collection and analysis of IDP orbiting around the Earth have been greatly enhanced. This enhancement occurred especially by the analyses of hard collectors that were exposed in low Earth orbits, before the impacting grains could have been processed by their entry in the Earth's atmosphere. Flux-mass relationships, velocities, and orbits of the particles have been established with meteoroid impact and penetration detectors on satellites and space probes. Also, studies of impact craters on lunar samples and a few retrieved sample materials exposed to space have added data on micrometeoroids. However, these techniques have limitations that prevent the study of undisturbed particles.

The primary interest in the analysis of IDPs arises from the possibility that an unknown fraction of these particles could be of cometary origin and thus contain information on the early history of the solar system. In addition, asteroidal and interstellar particles may also be present. Cometary materials is likely to be the most primitive material accessible for analysis. It is thought that grains once present in the cometary nuclei and now present as individual grains in interplanetary space are the best candidates for having remnant properties that were acquired before and/or during condensation in the protosolar nebula. The smaller size fraction (grains less than 10 microns in diameter) are assumed to be enriched in grains of cometary origin. Collected IDPs have been subjected to various kinds of irradiations, inside the past and present solar system. Benit and Bibring have theorized that these different irradiations of grains could result in different physical, chemical and isotopical properties. In particular, carbonaceous material present in some grains could have been synthesized during early periods of intense solar irradiation. Manmade orbital debris is also present and many of these particles had velocities similar to some IDPs. Debris particles are recognizable by their compositional signature (Ti or Zn of paint flakes, aluminum oxide spheres or lack of a chondritic composition, etc).

To study undisturbed particles, cosmic-dust collectors have been flown on balloons and rockets, and more recently on high-altitude aircraft. These techniques for dust collection in the atmosphere are limited because of short exposure times and uncertainty in the discrimination between cosmic-dust particles and terrestrial contaminants. Thus, among all the spacecrafts returns, LDEF was the first one designed to study the effects of space environment and to determine particle flux and orbital parameters. The FRECOPA experiments, in particular, were devoted to the study of dust particles and contained two entirely passive experiments flown for the detection of micropar- ticles: AO138-01 and AO138-02.

Photograph Classification: None

Associated Photograph(s):
LaRC - None
KSC - None
JSC - None

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