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Research | Space Research | Planetary research - CIDA
CIDA -Stardust
CIDA - Comet and Interstellar Dust Analyzer - is an instrument aboard NASA's Stardust spacecraft. Stardust was launched in February 1999. During its flyby of comet Wild 2 on January 2, 2004 it gathered cometary and interstellar dust samples, which will be returned to Earth on January 15, 2006. In addition cometary and interstellar dust was studied in real time by CIDA, which is a time-of-flight mass spectrometer, in principle the same instrument as PIA on GIOTTO and PUMA on VEGA missions to comet Halley. The results will be compared with the information gained from the analysis of the returned dust samples
CIDA instrument is contributed by Germany and has been fabricated by von Hoerner & Sulger, GmbH under contract by the German Space Agency, DARA and serves as a prototype for COSIMA instrument, which is a part of ESA's mission. The software of CIDA is developed by Finnish Meteorological Institute.
CIDA will also be one of NASA's Contour mission instruments.
Since 2nd of April, 1999, CIDA has had 40 particle impacts from interstellar dust and the comet tail. The first particle analysis is shown here.
More information:
, tel. 358 9 1929 4661
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