Publication Date:
2012-02-21
Description:
This research focuses on space dust ranging from 100μm to 1mm. Space dust is mainly due to secondary space debris, which is called ejecta. The objective was to create an inexpensive space dust impacts detector using elemental materials. The detector is a glass/epoxy laminate printed circuit board with an area of 81cm 2 for a weight of 30g. The detector can estimate the number of impacts and can give an approximation of the space dust size. The detector will be mounted on Horyu II that will operate in polar orbit for one year. In this article the authors report: a) the production of ejecta, b) the ejecta experiments on solar array coupon, aluminium honeycomb and CFRP/aluminium honeycomb, c) the detector's working principle and d) the estimations of the minimum detectable size of debris and collision probability. The ejecta experiments demonstrated that the ejecta's mass is 7 to 46 times higher than the projectile's mass. For space dust in the range 100μm – 600μm in diam...
Print ISSN:
1757-8981
Electronic ISSN:
1757-899X
Topics:
Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
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