The impact ionization charge yield is experimentally measured from four common materials used in space and specifically on the two STEREO spacecraft (germanium-coated black Kapton, beryllium copper, multilayer insulation, and solar cells). Cosmic dust particle impacts on spacecraft have been detected by electric field and plasma and radio wave instruments. The accurate interpretation of these signals is complicated by many factors, including the details of the spacecraft antenna system, the local spacecraft plasma environment, and our understanding of the physics of the impact process. The most basic quantity, the amount of charge liberated upon impact, is generally considered poorly constrained and is suspected to depend on the target material. Here we show that for common materials used on spacecraft this variability is small for impacts around 10 km/s, and the impact charge yield can be approximated by 80 fC for a 1 pg projectile. At higher speeds (∼50 km/s), variation of up to a factor of 5 is observed. The measured yields in the 10-50 km/s range are compared to measurements and predictions from the literature and are found to be lower than predicted by at least a factor of 12 at 10 km/s and at least a factor of 1.7 at 50 km/s. Impact charge is also found to depend on angle of incidence; the data suggest a maximum at 45 • .

We describe laboratory experiments which reproduce characteristic signals observed on spacecraft, believed to be caused by dust impact. A simulated spacecraft, including an antenna system using a facsimile of the preamplifier electronics from the STEREO/WAVES instrument, was bombarded by 10 km/s submicron‐sized dust at the University of Colorado Institute for Modeling Plasma, Atmospheres, and Cosmic Dust accelerator facility. Signal variation was investigated as a function of the DC potentials of both the spacecraft and the antennas. We observed (1) signals corresponding to modification of the spacecraft body potential, an important process believed to be responsible for the so‐called “triple hit” antenna signals on STEREO, (2) a few‐eV energy distribution for the electrons and ions released in the impact leading to (3) signals corresponding to direct recollection of a substantial fraction of the impact charge by the spacecraft antennas, even at modest antenna bias potentials. We also observe (4) an unexpected class of fast antenna signals, which do not appear to be caused by charge recollection by either the spacecraft or the antennas and may be induced by charge separation in the expanding plasma cloud. Similar signals are also commonly observed by the STEREO/WAVES instrument but have not previously been analyzed.

A hypervelocity dust accelerator for studying micrometeorite impacts has been constructed at the Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies (CCLDAS) at the University of Colorado. Based on the Max-Planck-Institüt für Kernphysik (MPI-K) accelerator, this accelerator is capable of emitting single particles of a specific mass and velocity selected by the user. The accelerator consists of a 3 MV Pelletron generator with a dust source, four image charge pickup detectors, and two interchangeable target chambers: a large high-vacuum test bed and an ultra-high vacuum impact study chamber. The large test bed is a 1.2 m diameter, 1.5 m long cylindrical vacuum chamber capable of pressures as low as 10(-7) torr while the ultra-high vacuum chamber is a 0.75 m diameter, 1.1 m long chamber capable of pressures as low as 10(-10) torr. Using iron dust of up to 2 microns in diameter, final velocities have been measured up to 52 km/s. The spread of the dust particles and the effect of electrostatic focusing have been measured using a long exposure CCD and a quartz target. Furthermore, a new technique of particle selection is being developed using real time digital filtering techniques. Signals are digitized and then cross-correlated with a shaped filter, resulting in a suppressed noise floor. Improvements over the MPI-K design, which include a higher operating voltage and digital filtering for detection, increase the available parameter space of dust emitted by the accelerator. The CCLDAS dust facility is a user facility open to the scientific community to assist with instrument calibrations and experiments.