Silica aerogel for capturing intact interplanetary dust particles for the Tanpopo experiment

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development and testing of silica aerogel panels designed to capture interplanetary dust particles for the Tanpopo astrobiology experiment on the ISS, highlighting successful manufacturing and qualification.

Contribution

It introduces a novel silica aerogel-based dust capture panel with a specific density configuration and demonstrates successful qualification testing for space deployment.

Findings

Successful manufacturing of 60 aerogel tiles in a contamination-controlled environment.

Qualification tests confirmed the suitability of the aerogel panels for space use.

Design of a box-framing aerogel with a holder for effective dust capture.

Abstract

In this paper, we report the progress in developing a silica-aerogel-based cosmic dust capture panel for use in the Tanpopo experiment on the International Space Station (ISS). Previous studies revealed that ultralow-density silica aerogel tiles comprising two layers with densities of 0.01 and 0.03 g/cm$^3$ developed using our production technique were suitable for achieving the scientific objectives of the astrobiological mission. A special density configuration (i.e., box framing) aerogel with a holder was designed to construct the capture panels. Qualification tests for an engineering model of the capture panel as an instrument aboard the ISS were successful. Sixty box-framing aerogel tiles were manufactured in a contamination-controlled environment.