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ROMFORSK-Program for romforskning

MAXIDUSTY - investigations on dust particles in the Earths summer and winter mesosphere

Tildelt: kr 3,0 mill.

Dust and aerosols are major components in all height regions of the Earths atmosphere. They affect the radiation balance of the Earth, atmospheric chemical reactions occur on them, they affect and can dominate the electric charge balance, and they can be sources and sinks for important trace gases in the atmosphere. Although considerable progress in our understanding of the dust and its role has been done recently many important questions remain unanswered. This is especially so for the dust in the Earth?s middle atmosphere, the mesosphere, where the first direct detection of dust was done as late as in 1994. The present rocket project will bring into use two entirely new dust detectors and other recently developed dust detectors, together wi th probes for the background condition, to study the size distribution, structure and charging of mesospheric dust from the smallest nanometer smoke particles to the larger icy particles. Of special interest is to investigate the structure of the icy par ticles to see if they act like sinks for the smoke particles, and to find to what degree small nanometer sized icy or meteoric smoke particles are positive and negative charge carriers in the mesosphere.

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ROMFORSK-Program for romforskning