DUNE-eXpress – Dust astronomy with ConeXpress Original Research Article

DUNE-eXpress (DUst measurement near Earth) is a scientific application of the ConeXpress platform developed by Dutch Space [] The goal of this mission is to investigate in situ the physical and dynamical properties of interstellar and interplanetary dust. The Dust Telescope on-board DUNE-eXpress consists of two large area mass analyzer (LAMA) instrument modules and four dust Trajectory Sensors with a total weight of 60 kg. LAMA measures the chemical composition of individual dust grains whereas the Trajectory Sensor determines their orbital parameters. DUNE-eXpress reaches an orbit outside the geostationary distance in order to avoid interferences with the Earth debris and magnetosphere environment. A position at the Sun–Earth Lagrange points L1 and L2 is well suited and reachable with DUNE-eXpress. A mission scenario based on the SMART 1 mission is presented.