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1 Planetary & Space Sciences Research Institute, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK
2 School of Biological & Molecular Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK
3 TOS-EMA, European Space Research Technology Centre, The European Space Agency, Keplerlaan 1, 2201 AZ Noordwijk, The Netherlands
4 Department of Mineralogy, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, UK
* Institute for Geophysics & Planetary Physics, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551, USA graham42{at}llnl.gov
** Electron Microscopy & Mineral Analysis, Department of Mineralogy, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK
Cosmic dust grains are the abundant, fine-grained end-member of a range of extraterrestrial materials travelling through space. These particles can impact orbiting space vehicles (e.g. satellites and the International Space Station) at velocities ranging from 10 to 72 km s–1. Impact damage resulting from such a collision could potentially disable or limit the operational use of a spacecraft. There is great commercial interest from the satellite companies and space agencies to understand the nature and proportion of impacts that are caused by cosmic dust particles to assist in risk management studies and for protective shielding optimization. The successful recovery of any surface that has been exposed to the near-Earth environment offers an excellent opportunity to search for micrometre-scaled impact features and the associated projectile residues using scanning electron microscopy and X-ray microanalysis.
