Study of Hybrid Dust Sample Collection System Toward Mars Aeroflyby Sample Collection Mission

New sample collector system is proposed for the sample return mission on Mars under consideration in JAXA. The new sample collector consists of silica aerogels and carbon aerogels to compensate each other for their unique characteristics. In order to demonstrate the concept and verify the technical difficulties, several experiments are conducted in this study. Heating tests are carried out to see whether the sample collector can be applied to the aerodynamic heating environment. From the heating tests, no significant difference is observed in the sample collector between before and after heating. Unlike the silica aerogels, the surface alteration that makes the dust capturing difficult are not observed on the surface of carbon aerogels. The light gas gun experiments are also performed to simulate the dust particle capturing by using the sample collector. It is confirmed from the study that 10-30μm dust particles with the relative velocity of 4km/s could be successfully captured by using the present sample collector. After the light gas gun experiments, several particles are picked out from the sample collector by using a nano-manipulating system. The SEM and EDS analysis is successfully performed for particles picked out from the sample collectors. Consequently, it is concluded that the dust particles would be analyzed by the present analysis scheme, if the present sample collector would be applied to the MASC mission.