Instrument study of the Lunar Dust eXplorer (LDX) for a lunar lander mission II: Laboratory model calibration

Abstract

A dust trajectory detector placed on the lunar surface is exposed to extend people’s knowledge on the dust environment above the lunar surface. The new design of Lunar Dust eXplorer (LDX) is well suited for lunar or asteroid landers with a broad range of particle charges (0.1–10fC), speeds (few ms−1 to few kms−1) and sizes (0.1–10μm). The calibration of dust trajectory detector is important for the detector development. We do present experimental results to characterize the accuracy of the newly developed LDX laboratory model. Micron sized iron particles were accelerated to speed between 0.5 and 20kms−1 with primary charges larger than 1fC. The achieved accuracies of the detector are ±5% and ±7% for particle charge and speed, respectively. Dust trajectories can be determined with measurement accuracy better than ±2°. A dust sensor of this type is suited for the exploration of the surface of small bodies without an atmosphere like the Earth’s moon or asteroids in future, and the minisatellites are also suitable carriers for the study of interplanetary dust and manned debris on low Earth orbits.