The Centre for Astrophysics and Planetary Science at the University of Kent is pleased to announce that an STFC-funded PDRA position is available within the Impact Group.

The project is titled ‘Exploring the fundamentals of impact capture to maximise future dust collections’ and will make use of the Impact Group’s two-stage light gas gun facility to explore the most appropriate methods to collect cosmic dust for three mission scenarios relating to space mission/experiment concepts currently in development:

• The collection of dust from the volcanic plumes of Io
• The collection of dust from icy plumes of Enceladus
• The opportunistic collection of dust in the Near-Earth environment by space hardware

The successful candidate will work with an interdisciplinary team led by Dr Penny Wozniakiewicz, which covers physics, planetary science, chemistry and biosciences. They will use a range of analytical instrumentation, including optical and electron microscopes, GC-MS, MP-AES and Raman spectroscopy to assess the performance of different available capture media.

They will also join our active external collaborations with members of the Io and Enceladus dust sampling mission concept teams, providing key underpinning data for these and future mission concepts.

The closing date for applications is Monday 9^th June, with interviews to be held the week starting 16^th June.

For further information and details on how to apply, please click here.

Alternatively, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Dr Penny Wozniakiewicz.