Cassini is one of the most sophisticated interplanetary spacecraft that humans have ever built and launched. Since achieving orbit at Saturn in 2004, Cassini has collected science data throughout its four-year prime mission (2004–2008), and it has since been approved for first and second extended missions through September 2017. In April 2017, the Cassini spacecraft will begin a daring set of ballistic orbits that will hop the rings and dive between the upper atmosphere of Saturn and its innermost D ring. The “dusty” environment of the inner D-ring region the spacecraft must fly through is hazardous because of the possible damage that dust particles, travelling at speeds as high as 31.4 km/s (relative to the spacecraft), can do to spacecraft hardware. During proximal ring-plane crossings, the mission operation team plans to point the high-gain antenna to the spacecraft velocity relative to dust particles in order to protect most of spacecraft instruments from the incoming dust particles. However, this attitude exposes two sun sensors (that are mounted on the antenna) to the incoming particles. High-velocity impacts on the sun sensor coverglass might penetrate it. Moreover, craters created by these impacts on the coverglass will degrade the transmissibility of light through it. Analyses performed to quantify the risks that the sun sensors must contend with during these hazardous ring-plane crossings are given in this paper.
Risk Assessment of Hypervelocity Impact of Saturn Dust on Cassini Sun Sensors
Journal of spacecraft and rockets ; 54 , 4
2017
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Englisch
Cassini Cosmic Dust Analyser: Composition of Dust at Saturn
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