Hi everyone, for my first post, I will be sharing a little on the current status of the Electrostatic Lunar Dust Analyzer (ELDA). Shown in the picture, ELDA is consisted of a deflection region that is sandwiched between two DTS's.
The DTS's purpose is to detect both high speed interstellar as well as slow moving lunar dust. This is done through the use of charge sensitive amplifiers (CSA) made from off-the-shelf components. With four planes of wire grid, charge from a particle passing through can be recorded and analyzed for speed and trajectory. In conjunction, with the deflection region, the mass of the particle passing through the instrument can be calculated using the trajectories obtained before and after the deflection region.
The instrument is partially completed with all slow speed CSA mounted. It is in a standby status ready to be tested in the vacuum chamber at NPL. All that needs to be done now is making a platform for the instrument to rest upon in the chamber. More updates will follow!
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