[meteorite-list] New Horizons Student Dust Counter Instrument Breaks Distance Record

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:03:18 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201010122203.o9CM3Ipd005687_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20101011.php

New Horizons Student Dust Counter instrument breaks distance record
October 11, 2010

The Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter, flying aboard NASA's New
Horizons mission to Pluto, now holds the record for the most distant
working dust detector ever to travel through space.

On October 10, the "SDC" surpassed the previous record when it flew
beyond 18 astronomical units - one unit is the distance between the Sun
and the Earth - or 1.67 billion miles, approaching the orbit of Uranus.
The only other dedicated instruments to measure space dust beyond
Jupiter's orbit - which is closer to the Sun than Uranus - were aboard
Pioneers 10 and 11 in the 1970s. Additionally, SDC is the first science
instrument on a planetary mission to be designed, tested and operated by
students.

"The New Horizons mission is going to break a lot of records, but this
early one is one of the sweetest," says New Horizons Principal
Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder,
Colo. "We're very proud to be collecting solar system dust data farther
out than any mission ever has, and we're even prouder to be carrying the
first student-built and -operated science instrument ever sent on a
planetary space mission."

The instrument is the work of students at the University of Colorado's
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). Andrew Poppe, a
LASP graduate student in physics who operates SDC and analyzes the data,
says "it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be part of the group of
students who made this happen. We built a record-breaking, successful
instrument that is taking scientific measurements to advance our
understanding of the role of dust in our solar system."

Poppe and several collaborators recently published the first results
from SDC in Geophysical Research Letters. "The SDC measurements of
dust inside five astronomical units agreed well with the earlier
measurements made by the Galileo and Ulysses missions," Poppe says. "We
also reported the first-ever measurements of sub-micron-sized dust
grains in the outer solar system by a dedicated dust instrument.'

Poppe is one of five students on the current SDC team, and one of 32 who
have worked on the instrument since the project began in 2002. The
original team of approximately 20 undergraduate and graduate students
has evolved over time, with new students brought into the fold as the
nearly 20-year New Horizons mission has proceeded from concept
development through launch and into its ongoing flight phase.

"The SDC was built and tested to the same NASA engineering standards as
professionally built flight instruments, under the supervision of
professionals," says SDC instrument Principal Investigator Mihaly
Horanyi, a LASP researcher and University of Colorado professor.
"Students have filled roles from science and engineering to journalism
and accounting; many of them have graduated and gone on to careers in
the space industry. In addition to its significant contribution to
science, SDC proved to be an excellent investment in the scientists and
engineers of tomorrow."

SDC was launched aboard New Horizons in January 2006; six months later
the instrument was renamed for Venetia Burney, the English schoolgirl
who, at age 11, offered the name "Pluto" for the newly discovered ninth
planet in 1930.

SDC will continue to return information on the dust that strikes its
detectors during the spacecraft's approach to Pluto and flight beyond.
This dust is formed in the Kuiper Belt, a collection of asteroids
orbiting the Sun outside of Neptune. The improved observations that SDC
will make available will advance our understanding of the origin and
evolution of our own solar system, as well as helping scientists study
planet formation in dust disks around other stars.

LASP manages the SDC project and has a long tradition of involvement
with student instruments, including the Solar Mesosphere Explorer and
the Student Nitric Oxide Experiment. LASP recruits both undergraduates
and graduates from CU to help with instrument design, construction,
maintenance, programming, and operations. Funding for the SDC came
primarily from the NASA New Horizons mission, through the Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory, which manages New Horizons; and
the Southwest Research Institute, home institution of Stern and the
center of New Horizons instrument observation planning. LASP has also
contributed funds to help pay students working on the SDC.
Received on Tue 12 Oct 2010 06:03:18 PM PDT