Student Dust Counter I : Science Objectives
Abstract
The New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is scheduled for launch in January 2006. As part of the Education and Public Outreach activity of the mission, undergraduate and graduate students at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado, are building a space experiment: the Student Dust Counter (SDC). This talk will summarize the scientific goals of this experiment. An accompanying poster describes the technical details of SDC. The primary goal of SDC is to map the dust distribution in the Solar System from 1 to 50 AU. It will greatly enhance our knowledge of dust production and transport in the outer Solar System by providing more sensitive observations than earlier experiments past Saturn, and the first in situ dust observations beyond 18 AU.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2003
- Bibcode:
- 2003AGUFMED41B1167M
- Keywords:
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- 2129 Interplanetary dust;
- 6015 Dust;
- 6297 Instruments and techniques