New Horizons: A Document Analysis

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The final scientific instrument on board New Horizons is unprecedented in many ways. The Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter, SDC, is the first instrument on any NASA deep space mission to be designed and implemented by students (JHUAPL, 2015a). This instrument consists of an eighteen by twelve inch grate coupled with an electronic detector capable of determining the speed and mass of particles making contact with it (JHUAPL, 2015a). While such detectors have been present on previous missions, this is the first to make it past eighteen astronomical units, which will make it more effective at measuring the concentration of dust produced by collisions in the Kuiper Belt, and determining the properties and source of cosmic dust (JHUAPL, 2015a).