Investigating the Dust Flux in the Meteoric Smoke Sampler (MESS) Instrument for Sampling Dust in the Mesosphere

Abstract. We report and discuss the design of a rocket instrument to collect mesospheric dust particles that are composed of ice and include smaller refractory meteoric smoke particles (MSP). We expect that the ice components melt and that MSP are collected. The instrument consists of a collection device with an opening and closure mechanism and an attached conic funnel. Attaching the funnel increases the sampling area in comparison to the collection area which is kept small since this determines the size of the closure device which is a critical component to be designed for sea recovery. The instrument will collect primary particles that directly hit the collection area and secondary particles that form from mesospheric dust hitting the funnel. We simulate the entry and impact of dust onto the detector considering their trajectories in the airflow and the fragmentation at the funnel. We estimate the collection efficiency of the instrument and the impact energy of particles at the collecting area. The design considered has a sampling area of 5 cm diameter and a collection area of 1.8 cm diameter. To estimate the expected amount of collected dust we assume collection during rocket flight through a 0.5 to 4 km dust layer with dust number densities and dust sizes at 85 km as derived from lidar observations (Kiliani et al., 2015). Assuming the collected particles contain 3 % volume fraction of MSP, we find that the instrument would collect of the order of 10¹⁴ to 10¹⁵ amu of refractory MSP particles. The estimate basis on the assumption that the ice components are melting and the flow conditions in the instruments are for typical atmospheric pressures at 85 km.