Speaker
Description
Although the ablation of re-entering space waste is expected to take place mainly in the mesosphere, and some metallic species must have been significantly (>10%) contaminated anthropogenic origin, no measurement has been made such contamination in the mesosphere because it is too high to fly balloons, because no adequate mass spectrometer for low-altitude sounding rocket has been developed to measure high pressure environment in the mesosphere, and the remote sensing method can measure only the major metallic species. Considering the upward mesospheric convection that carries even metallic atoms that are originated from the meteoroid ablation, the best measurement method to estimate the current level of contamination is to measure them in the ionosphere, together with balloon observation in the stratosphere.
The METAL mission (submitted for mini-F call) aims such measurements. The required specification of the mass spectrometer is already available, by which more sciences on the metal dynamics, 3D ionospheric, and ionospheric chemistry can be performed by slightly increasing the apogee of the satellite. In the workshop, the requirement for instrument specification, satellite, and orbit are presented, as well as the other science with such a mission.
