Compact Electrostatic Dust Analyzer for Measuring Dust Transport on Small Airless Bodies (CEDA)

Electrostatic dust lofting and transport is a longstanding problem, which was first indicated from serval Apollo observations on the lunar surface. Beyond the Moon, it is also related to a number of observations on other airless bodies, including dust ponds on asteroids Eros, radial spokes in Saturn's rings, the high surface porosity indicated from main-belt asteroid spectra, the highly smooth surface of Saturn's icy moon Atlas, and fluffy dust particles ejected from comet 67P. Recent laboratory experiments provided new insights into the fundamental mechanisms of dust charging and lofting. The observations, combined with the laboratory results, provide strong evidence that electrostatic dust lofting and transport is a universal phenomenon on all airless bodies in the solar system. This electrostatic process, which has not been considered in the past studies, is expected to play an important role in the surface evolution of airless bodies. To date, there are no missions that have explored the properties and efficiency of electrostatic dust lofting on any airless bodies. Currently, most of instrumentation, such as the Electrostatic Dust Analyzer (EDA), is focused on measuring electrostatic dust lofting and transport on the lunar surface. Here we propose a Compact Electrostatic Dust Analyzer (CEDA) that specifically targets small airless bodies, including asteroids, Martian moons, dormant comets, and other dust-rich small planetary moons, on which lofted dust particles are expected to transport on a global scale or even escape from their parent bodies, resulting in profound effects on changing the surface properties and subsequent dynamics of these small bodies. CEDA will answer the following outstanding science questions: 1) What are the velocity, charge, and size distributions, and the flux of electrostatically lofted dust on small airless bodies in a size range of 1 - 5 km in radii? 2) How do the characteristics of electrostatic dust lofting respond to changing solar wind plasma and UV radiation conditions? CEDA takes heritage from the EDA instrument with two fully redesigned key components - the sensor module and charge sensitive amplifiers (CSA) to meet the criteria for measurements on the surface of small bodies, including ultra-slow lofted dust particles (0.1 -- 5 m/s) and constraints for hard landing. The size of the CEDA is approximately 1U (10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm), its estimated mass is ~1.5 kg and estimated power consumption is ~3 W. The sensor module consists of two sensor grids that are connected to two CSAs to detect the charge, velocity, size, and flux of electrostatically lofted dust particles that enter the instrument. The CEDA development starts at TRL 3. A medium-fidelity prototype of the CEDA instrument will be built and undergo environmental tests to achieve TRL 5 by the end of the project.

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