Laboratory calibration of the cassini cosmic dust analyser (CDA) using new, low density projectiles

The Cassini Cosmic Dust Analyser (CDA), developed from the Galileo and Ulysses dust instruments with the addition of a Chemical Analyser, is currently travelling outward from the Earth (collecting data from March 1999 onward) to the Saturnian system (arrival 2004) via Jupiter. The Chemical Analyser will provide information on the elemental composition of impacting micrometeoroids through impact ionisation, time-of-flight mass spectrometry.