A new paper about results of the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter (SDC) has been published.
A new paper about the latest results of the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter (SDC) onboard the New Horizons spacecraft has been published with predictions for interstellar dust particles from our side.
The student dust counter, built by students from the University of Boulder, Colorado, has been flying onboard New Horizons towards Pluto and beyond.
It is able to detect dust particles with masses larger than 10^-12 g and has provided near-continuous measurements of the interplanetary dust environment up to a distance of 50 au. The detected particle flux is thought to be dominated by dust from Edgeworth–Kuiper Belt objects, but a continuous contribution from interstellar dust is expected as well. If the New Horizons spacecraft stays healthy and continues operating through the 2030s, it may soon provide unparalleled insights into the dust environment at the edge of the solar system and beyond.