Grün, E., M. Baguhl, N. Divine, H. Fechtig, D.P. Hamilton,
M.S. Hanner, J. Kissel, B.-A. Lindblad, D. Linkert, G. Linkert,
I. Mann, J.A.M. McDonnell, G.E. Morfill, C. Polanskey, R. Riemann,
G. Schwehm, N. Siddique, P. Staubach and H.A. Zook 1995. Three years
of Galileo dust data. Planet. Space Sci., 43, #8, 971-999.
From its launch in October 1989 until the end of 1992, the Galileo
spacecraft traversed interplanetary space from Venus to the asteroid
belt and successfully executed close flybys of Venus, the Earth, and
the asteroid Gaspra. The dust instrument has been operating most of
the time since it was switched on in December 1989. Except for short
time intervals near Earth, data from the instrument were received via
occasional (once per week to once per month) memory read outs
containing 282 to 818 bytes of data. All events (impacts or noise
events) were classified by an onboard program into 24 categories.
Over the three year time span, the dust detector recorded 469 `big'
dust impacts. These were counted in 21 of the 24 event
categories. The three remaining categories of very low amplitude
events contain mostly noise events. The impact rate varied from 0.2
to 2 impacts per day depending on heliocentric distance and direction
of spacecraft motion with respect to the interplanetary dust
cloud. Because the average data transmission rate was very low, some
data were not received on the ground. Complete data sets for 358
`big' impacts were received, but the other 111 `big' impacts were only
counted. The observed impact rates are compared with a model of the
meteoroid complex.
Return
to Doug Hamilton's Publication List