Amount Awarded: $22,500
This project aims to better understand the dust in the heliosphere which is the region around the Sun filled with solar wind and shielded from most of the interstellar medium plasma; it is at present being explored with the Parker Solar Probe near the Sun and with New Horizons in the Kuiper Belt. Both spacecraft observe dust particles thus providing data of the dust fluxes at the edges of our solar system; and the UCB group is working with these observations. The UiT group investigates dust dynamics, properties, and interactions and is developing new techniques to analyse dust observations in the inner heliosphere. In this project we combine our expertise to investigate the influence of solar wind and heliospheric parameters on dust dynamics and properties in the heliosphere. Building on this, we study the collisional evolution of interplanetary and interstellar dust, using the solar system dust cloud as an example of the planetary debris disks around other stars. Our project team includes students and researchers at all career levels and our work program can be expanded for future collaborations.