SDC Installation

A technician installs the Student Dust Counter detector, under its protective red cover, on the deck of the New Horizons spacecraft in a cleanroom at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., in August 2004. The device combines two major elements: an 18-by-12-inch detector mounted on the outside of the spacecraft, and an electronics box inside the craft that determines the mass and speed of the space-dust particles that hit the detector.

The instrument was renamed the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter in June 2006, honoring the girl who named the planet Pluto in 1930.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

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