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Updated: Aug 18, 2026

Laboratory Drop Towers for the Experimental Simulation of Dust-aggregate Collisions in the Early Solar System
Published on: June 5, 2014
Migration of interplanetary dust
S I Ipatov1, J C Mather, P A Taylor
1NASA/GSFC, Mail Code 685, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA. siipatov@hotmail.com
Abstract:
We numerically investigate the migration of dust particles with initial orbits close to those of the numbered asteroids, observed trans-Neptunian objects, and comet Encke. The fraction of silicate asteroidal particles that collided with the Earth during their lifetime varied from 11% for 100 micron particles to 0.008% for 1 micron particles. Almost all asteroidal particles with diameter d >/= 4 microns collided with the Sun. For migrating asteroidal dust particles, the peaks in semimajor axis distribution at the n:(n + 1) resonances with Earth and Venus, and the gaps associated with the 1:1 resonances with these planets are more pronounced for larger particles. The probability of collisions of cometary particles with the Earth is smaller than for asteroidal particles, and this difference is greater for larger particles.
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