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| Titel |
The Student Dust Counter: Status Report at 25 AU |
| VerfasserIn |
Mihaly Horanyi, Jamey Szalay, Marcus Piquette |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2013
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 15 (2013) |
| Datensatznummer |
250077810
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The Student Dust Counter (SDC) is an impact dust detector on board the New Horizons
Mission to Pluto. It is designed to map the spatial and size distribution of interplanetary dust
particles in order to verify the existence of the predicted structures in our dust disk, the
Zodiacal cloud. SDC provides the first dedicated dust measurements beyond 18 AU,
where the Pioneer sensors stopped working. After the Pluto-Charon fly-by, SDC will
continue to measure dust on into the Kuiper Belt. These observations will advance
our understanding of the origin and evolution of our own solar system and allow
for comparative studies of planet formation in dust disks around other stars. SDC
is the only experiment to date that was designed, built, and is now operated by
students on a deep space mission. We briefly review the scientific motivation for
SDC, followed by the instrument description, and report on the observations to date. |
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