Towards a new model of the interplanetary meteoroid environment

Abstract

Improved models of the interplanetary meteoroid environment enjoy the interest of both spacecraft engineers and dust researchers. The engineers need it for risk assessments for their spacecraft instruments. Modelling dynamical and collisional evolution of interplanetary dust should lead to a match with observations, and an empirical model can be a good mediator between physical models and sparse observational data. Our current effort is directed towards the construction of a new model of the interplanetary meteoroid environment based on a number of observational data sets including in-situ dust flux measurements onboard spacecraft, radar meteor surveys and thermal emission of zodiacal dust. In contrast to earlier models, we use long-term particle dynamics to define populations for the new model. Based on these populations, we have constructed a prototype model which reasonably fits in-situ impact counts by Galileo and Ulysses dust experiments.