The Variability of Cosmic Dust Influx as Seen by the AIM Satellite

The Cosmic Dust Experiment (CDE) onboard the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) mission is a dust impact experiment to monitor the variability of the cosmic dust influx. It is based on permanently polarized thin plastic film sensors that generate an electrical signal when an impacting dust particle penetrates them. The total surface area is about 0.1 square meters, and the detection threshold is about a micron in particle radius. The variability of these small grains is assumed to follow the variability of the dominant 100 micron radius particles, hence the measured flux can be used in correlation studies with various Noctilucent (NLC) activity indexes. In this talk we will describe the CDE instrument. We will discuss our challenges in identifying the various noise sources that could possibly contaminate our science measurements, and also our initial science results about the spatial and temporal variability of dust fluxes entering our atmosphere. The results will be compared with expectations based on models, earlier in situ dust measurements, and radar observations.