THE PROMPT PARTICLE BACKGROUND AND MICROMETEOROID ENVIRONMENT AT L2 AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR EDDINGTON

摘要

The Eddington spacecraft will orbit the Sun at the L2 point during its 5 year asteroseismology and planet finding mission. The successful detection of objects of interest and the amount and accuracy of the data that is recorded will depend on the prompt particle background interacting with the detectors in the focal plane of the instrument. The sources of the particle background are both solar and galactic. Eddington will be operational during the next period of solar maximum and therefore consideration of the particle environment is important in deducing the shielding requirement for the Eddington CCD detectors and the impact the environment will have on the collected science. This paper presents measured spacecraft data and predictions of the flux and energy of the particle environment at L2. An understanding of the micrometeoroid environment at L2 is also critical to the Eddington mission. The impact of micrometeoroids on the Eddington focal plane has the potential of causing catastrophic failure of one or several detectors resulting in a large reduction in the data obtained. A review of the dust particle background and the stability of dust accumulated around the L2 point is also presented and is the subject of further study.