Otto Berg’s flight spare of the cosmic dust detector experiment built for the Mariner spacecraft, identical to the unit carried to Mars during the 1960s. The device features an 8.75″ circular mirrored acoustical cosmic dust sensor attached to a box labeled “Cosmic Dust Electronics,” with serial ports on front and back.
According to Berg’s notes, this unit is identical to the one carried to Mars and used while in orbit to detect the numbers and nature of cosmic dust in that atmosphere. It was mounted on the body with microphone plate approximately perpendicular to the plane of orbit, to measure the momentum, distribution, density, and direction of cosmic dust. Berg was one of three co-experimenters involved in the development of the device.
The cosmic dust detector carried on Mariner 4 famously registered 17 hits in a 15-minute span on September 15, 1967, part of an apparent micrometeoroid shower which temporarily changed the spacecraft’s attitude and probably slightly damaged the thermal shield (NASA press release). On December 10 and 11, a total of 83 micrometeoroid hits were recorded, causing perturbation of the attitude and degradation of the signal strength. On December 21, 1967, communications with Mariner 4 were terminated.
In the mirror plate disc, you see a reflection of Sputnik and LM landing gear hanging from the ceiling of the Future Ventures 🚀 Space Collection.
Dr. Otto Berg (1917-2017) was a pioneering astrophysicist who began innovative high-altitude research while working with the Naval Research Laboratory using captured Nazi V-2 rockets in 1948, years before the birth of NASA. He became a ‘charter member’ of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he served as head of the Cosmic Dust Section. He was the Principal Investigator (P.I.) for several rocket probe experiments, launched on Aerobee sounding rockets, before satellites were perfected. He was P.I. for two heliocentric (sun-orbiting) missions, Pioneer 8 and 9, and for the Lunar Ejecta and Meteorites (LEAM) experiment placed on the moon by the Apollo 17 astronauts. He is credited as author of co-author of some 67 published scientific papers, and was awarded the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1977. Upon retirement, Berg was invited to work for the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and was subsequently employed as a space consultant with the University of Maryland.
Berg’s work spans from early V-2 rocket research all the way through Apollo 17, he had a hand in practically every important early NASA project. In the mid-1950s, he assembled a famous photomosaic of Earth from space using film footage taken at an altitude of 100 miles, published widely in magazines like Life and Look. Studies in cosmic dust would come to dominate the rest of his career. His experiments proved important for manned spaceflight – specifically for EVAs – as they showed that the probability of an astronaut being struck by micrometeoroids was drastically smaller than originally believed.
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