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Abstract

A new time-of-flight spectrometer for the chemical analysis of cosmic dust particles in space has been simulated by Simion 7.0. The instrument is based upon impact ionization. This method is a reliable method for in-situ dust detection and is well established. Instruments using the impact ionization flew on-board Helios, Galileo and are still in operation on-board Ulysses and Cassini-Huygens missions. he new instrument has a large sensitive area of 0.1m² in order to achieve significant number of measurements. The mass resolution M\Delta M > 100 and the mass range covers the most relevant elements expected in cosmic dust. The instrument has a reflectron configuration which increases the mass resolution. Most of the ions released during the impact are focused to the detector. The ion detector consists of a large area ion-to-electron converter, an electron reflectron and a microchannel plate etector.