Portable Sensor System for Real-Time Monitoring of Dust Deposition in Space Applications

We present a portable electronic sensor system for real-time monitoring of dust deposition in avionics and space applications, where particle contamination can alter the operation of instruments and scientific payloads. To measure and verify the deposition events on space hardware during fabrication, assembly and in the launch phase, a compact system based on an integrated electronic CMOS chip has been designed. The chip tracks the capacitance variation between two interdigitated electrodes, affected by the arrival of dust, ensuring single event monitoring and detection of particles with a diameter down to 1 µm. The system is completed by a low-power microcontroller for setting the chip operation, an analog-to-digital converter for the acquisition of the particle deposition events, a Bluetooth transmitter for data read-out and all the other hardware and software functionalities that ensure completely autonomous operations.