Scientists and engineers at the CU Boulder will soon take part in an effort to collect a bit of stardust—the tiny bits of matter that flow through the Milky Way Galaxy and were once the initial building blocks of our solar system.

这种追求是NASA的一部分 星际测绘和加速探测器 (IMAP) mission to explore our solar neighborhood—decoding the messages in particles from the sun and beyond our cosmic shield. 自2018年以来，来自 大气与空间物理实验室 (LASP) at CU Boulder has led the development of one of the mission’s 10 scientific instruments.

本周，研究小组小心翼翼地装载了这个被称为 星际尘埃实验 (IDEX)，装上一辆送货卡车. 仪器, 它的形状像一个大鼓，重47磅, 将前往马里兰州约翰霍普金斯大学应用物理实验室. 在那里，工程师将开始将IDEX安装到IMAP航天器上.

IDEX是第一个到达马里兰州的IMAP仪器. 在两年的任务中, IDEX will detect and analyze in great detail the composition of hundreds of interstellar dust particles. These particles flow into our solar system from the vast expanses of space between stars, 或者星际介质. IDEX will also detect thousands of interplanetary dust particles shed from comets and asteroids. 

Interstellar grains are spread so thin that the instrument may only collect a few hundred of them during its lifetime. 但每一粒星际尘埃都蕴含着宝贵的信息.

“这些尘埃颗粒是在超新星爆炸中产生的, 它们中的大多数都在星际空间中被改变了, but they’re still the closest material we have for understanding the original building blocks of the solar system,Mihály Horányi说, principal investigator for IDEX and a professor in LASP and the Department of Physics at CU Boulder. “在太空中探测和分析它们打开了一扇通往宇宙的新窗口.”

IMAP, 由普林斯顿大学领导的, is slated to launch in spring 2025 and will journey roughly 1 million miles to a point in space between Earth and the sun called Lagrange Point 1.

执行任务期间, IDEX将打开大约20英寸宽的光圈来捕捉飞驰而过的灰尘, 有点像座头鲸舀起磷虾. 仪器 will record how fast these particles are traveling and from where and what they’re made of.

拉奎尔阿伦斯, 谁负责IDEX的任务操作, explained that the instrument is the result of years of work from a team of professionals and students at LASP—including a lot of late nights and early mornings.

“博彩平台推荐作为一个团队和LASP所取得的成就是惊人的,阿伦斯说, LASP的专业研究助理.

速度与激情

丹贝克, LASP主任, added that the institute has a long legacy of taking a magnifying glass to the universe’s often-overlooked dust. LASP的一个团队之前设计并制造了一个类似的仪器，叫做 表面粉尘分析仪 (须). 苏达是美国宇航局木卫二快船任务的一部分, 计划于今年晚些时候发射到木星的卫星木卫二上. LASP’s Student Dust Counter launched on the New Horizons mission in 2006 and is now exploring the outskirts of our solar system.

“It has been one of the major achievements of LASP to pursue cosmic dust research,” Baker said. “For some two decades the LASP team has refined and advanced the detection techniques to allow truly amazing measurements that revolutionize our understanding of the origin and evolution of our solar system and the vast cosmos beyond.”

IDEX项目经理斯科特·塔克(Scott Tucker)表示，在太空中捕获尘埃绝非易事. 因为星际尘埃粒子非常罕见, he and his colleagues had to make the instrument roughly two-and-a-half times bigger than SUDA—the bigger the mouth, 你能捕获的粒子就越多.

每一粒尘埃, 哪颗行星可能富含硅和碳元素, 可能只有百万分之几英寸宽. 但也有一些将以每小时10万英里的速度行驶.

当这些颗粒撞到IDEX的后部时, 它们会瞬间蒸发成一团离子, 然后仪器将收集和分析哪些数据.

“The main challenge with IDEX has been what engineers call ‘dynamic range,’” Tucker said. “We’ve got to take both really fast and large particles and smaller and slower particles and measure them with the same instrument.”

到目前为止, 他补充说, scientists have only been able to capture and study a few dozen grains of interstellar dust, 让IDEX的每一个新发现都变得珍贵.

“They’re little packets of information from long ago and far, far away,” Tucker said.

一路平安

他补充说，IDEX不可能走出科罗拉多州, 更不用说进入太空了, 没有学生和早期职业人士的贡献. 

阿伦斯就是这些崭露头角的研究者之一. She earned her undergraduate degree in astrophysics from CU Boulder in 2020 and joined LASP in 2023. She made sure that IDEX was operating correctly while engineers ran it through a barrage of tests. That included shooting tiny pieces of minerals that represent interstellar matter at the instrument using a machine on campus called a dust accelerator.

她也是这次旅行的87人之一, 隆重地, to space alongside IDEX—the instrument carries a plaque engraved with the names of many of the team members who worked on it over the years.

“看到所有这些工程师一起工作，真是令人震惊, 工作到很晚, 找出问题，并以积极的态度不断前进,阿伦斯说.

普林斯顿大学教授David J. McComas和一个由25个合作机构组成的国际团队一起领导这项任务. 劳雷尔的约翰霍普金斯应用物理实验室, 马里兰州建造了宇宙飞船并执行任务. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program portfolio. The Explorers and Heliophysics Project Division at NASA’s Goddard 空间 Flight Center in Greenbelt, 马里兰, manages the STP Program for the agency’s Heliophysics Division of NASA’s 科学 Mission Directorate.