The Munich Dust Counter on board the MUSES-A mission: Calibration of impacts inside and in front of the detector

Abstract

The Munich Dust Counter (MDC) is a scientific space experiment that flew aboard the Japanese satellite HITEN (MUSES-A) for 3 years in the vicinity of the Earth and the Moon and also aboard the university satellite BREMSAT for more than one year in LEO. The plasma that is generated by dust particles impacting on a gold target, is measured to determine the mass, velocity, and crude flight direction of cosmic dust particles and space debris. After a short introduction describing the experiment setup the new aspects concerning the calibration of the experiments will be presented. There is special emphasis on impacts in front of the MDC onto an aluminum-frame. It will be shown that impacts outside an ionization detector can produce enough charge to be measured by the experiment. After a short discussion about detection possibility of charged particles, the implications of the achieved results during three years of operation of the MDC on board the HITEN spacecraft will be discussed.