The Near-Sun Dust Environment: Initial Observations from Parker Solar Probe

Abstract

The Parker Solar Probe (PSP) spacecraft has flown into the most dense and previously unexplored region of our solar system's zodiacal cloud. While PSP does not have a dedicated dust detector, multiple instruments onboard are sensitive to the effects of meteoroid bombardment. Here, we discuss measurements taken during PSP's first two orbits and compare them to models of the zodiacal cloud's dust distribution. Comparing the radial impact rate trends and the timing and location of a dust impact to an energetic particle detector, we find the impactor population to be consistent with dust grains on hyperbolic orbits escaping the solar system. Assuming PSP's impact environment is dominated by hyperbolic impactors, the total quantity of dust ejected from our solar system is estimated to be 1-14 tons/s. We expect PSP will encounter an increasingly more intense impactor environment as its perihelion distance and semi-major axis are decreased.

34 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables

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Cited by in corpus (18)

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• Space Plasma Physics: A Review
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• Estimates of the change rate of solar mass and gravitational constant based on the dynamics of the Solar System
• Laboratory Study of Antenna Signals Generated by Dust Impacts on Spacecraft
• Electrostatic Model for Antenna Signal Generation From Dust Impacts
• Formation, Structure, and Detectability of the Geminids Meteoroid Stream
• Time domain structures and dust in the solar vicinity: Parker Solar Probe observations
• Variability of Antenna Signals From Dust Impacts
• Encounter of Parker Solar Probe and a Comet-like Object During Their Perihelia: Model Predictions and Measurements
• Sensitivity of the Roman Coronagraph Instrument to Exozodiacal Dust
• Alpha-Meteoroids then and now: Unearthing an overlooked micrometeoroid population
• Heliocentric Distance Dependence of Zodiacal Light Observed by Hayabusa2#
• Size distribution of small grains in the inner zodiacal cloud
• Modeling Meteoroid Impacts on the Juno spacecraft
• Dust Accretion onto Exoplanets
• PSP/IS$\odot$IS Observation of a Solar Energetic Particle Event Associated With a Streamer Blowout Coronal Mass Ejection During Encounter 6
• On the distribution of the the near-solar bound dust grains detected with Parker Solar Probe