Abstract
A theoretical model has been developed to evaluate the magnetic field disturbances due to plasma clouds formed by hypervelocity (68 km/s) impacts of milligram mass dust particles on the Giotto spacecraft at comet P/Halley. The model is partly analytical and assumes unmagnetized ions and frozen‐in electrons as suggested by the high time‐resolution magnetic field observations. It treats the cloud development after an initial phase with unfrozen plasma ending a few milliseconds after impact. Fitting the model to the observed magnetic field signature of the impacts allows the determination of the center‐of‐mass velocity and the expansion velocity as well as the total number of particles in the expanding cloud, which leads to an estimate for the mass of the dust particle.
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