Nanoparticles in Earth's ionosphere – detection from rockets

The upper atmosphere at the transition to space contains small nanometer-sized dust particles. The particles originate from the entry of the cosmic dust into the atmosphere, a process where a large fraction of material evaporates and then re-condenses. A fraction of the dust particles is electrically charged and the dust interacts with the other charged components of the atmosphere at this altitude1. The dust can be observed from sounding rockets and the detection with Faraday cup instruments during summer when the dust particles have sizes of up to several 10 nm is well developped2. We here discuss the challenges of detecting nanoparticles in winter conditions when their sizes are few nm and smaller and present results from a student rocket campaign made in January 2019. This work is funded by Research Council of Norway, NFR 275503. References: Mann, I., Gunnarsdottir, T., Häggström, et al. Contributions to Plasma Physics 2019, in print. Havnes, O., Antonsen, T., Baumgarten, G., et al., Atmospheric Measurement Techniques 2019; 12 (3). Trollvik, H., Master Thesis, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 2019. Gunnarsdottir, T., Master Thesis, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 2019.