SUDA: A Dust Mass Spectrometer for compositional surface mapping for the JUICE mission to the Galilean moons
Abstract
We developed a dust mass spectrometer to measure the composition of ballistic dust particles populating the thin exospheres that were detected around each of the Galilean moons. Since these grains are direct samples from the moons' icy surfaces, unique composition data will be obtained that will help to define and constrain the geological activities on and below the moons' surface. The proposed instrument will make a vital contribution to ESA's planned JUICE mission and provide key answers to its main scientific questions about the surface composition, habitability, the icy crust, and exchange processes with the deeper interior of the Jovian icy moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. The SUrface Dust Aanalyser (SUDA) is a time-of-flight, reflectron-type impact mass spectrometer, opti-mised for a high mass resolution which only weakly depends on the impact location. The small size (268×250×171 mm3), low mass (< 4 kg) and large sen-sitive area (220 cm2) makes the instrument well suited for the challenging demands of the JUICE mission to the Galilean moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. A full-size prototype SUDA instrument was built in order to demonstrate its performance through calibra-tion experiments at the Heidelberg dust accelerator with a variety of cosmo-chemically relevant dust ana-logues. The effective mass resolution of m/Δm of 150-200 is achieved for mass range of interest m = 1-150.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.P51A2015K
- Keywords:
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- 5470 PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLID SURFACE PLANETS / Surface materials and properties;
- 5494 PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLID SURFACE PLANETS / Instruments and techniques;
- 6213 PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS / Dust;
- 6218 PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS / Jovian satellites