Berlin 2014 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik
EP 5: Postersitzung
EP 5.24: Poster
Dienstag, 18. März 2014, 16:30–18:30, DO24 Foyer
The Dust Impact Monitor (DIM) on-board the Rosetta lander Philae — •Thomas Albin1, Harald Krueger1, Alexander Loose1, and Alberto Flandes2 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, 37077 Göttingen, Germany — 2Ciencias Espaciales, Instituto de Geofisica, UNAM, 04510 Mexico, D.F.
The Dust Impact Monitor (DIM) is a dust and ice measuring instrument mounted on top of the Rosetta lander Philae. Rosetta is an ESA mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko that shall encounter the comet in summer 2014. Philae shall land on the comet nucleus in November 2014.
DIM is a cube-shaped instrument with 9 piezoelectric sensor plates mounted on 3 orthogonal sides of the cube. Impacts of ice and dust particles onto the sensor plates lead to deformation of these plates that cause a voltage signal which can be measured. On the comet, active regions emit dust particles of different sizes, shapes, velocities and directions. With DIM one can determine the properties of these particles by comparing the amplitude and contact time of the impact events with Hertzian theory of elastic impact. This will reveal the physical characteristics of the cometary ice and dust in the size range of a few 100 Micrometers to a few Millimeters.
We present laboratory measurements performed with a flight-spare unit of the DIM sensor. We performed impact experiments with spherical ice particles and with balls of other materials to simulate impacts of cometary grains onto the sensor. Our results are mostly consistent with Hertz' theory of elastic impact.