The Stardust dust flux monitor Original Research Article

The Stardust mission is a NASA spacecraft to be launched in February 1999. It will flyby cornet 81P/Wild-2 in December 2004, exposing aerogel samples capturing small particles as it does so. The aerogel will be returned to Earth in January 2006. The spacecraft is equipped with other sensors including a dust flux monitor. The dust flux monitor is a combination of low and high rate systems, a large area momentum sensor (LAMS) and PVDF sensors respectively, sensitive to different momentum ranges. This paper describes the dust flux monitor, including the laboratory calibration of the LAMS, modelling of the cometʹs dust emission and predictions of the impact flux on the dust sensors during the comet flyby. The predicted rates are such that a relatively close flyby is feasible without saturating the detectors.