EXPERIMENTAL-TECHNIQUE TO INVESTIGATE THE INTERSTELLAR GAS - PRELIMINARY-ANALYSIS

The Interstellar Gas Experiment (IGE) exposed thin metallic foils to c ollect neutral interstellar gas particles. These particles penetrate t he solar system due to their motion relative to the sun. Thus, it was possible to entrap them in the collecting foils along with Precipitati ng magnetospheric and perhaps some ambient atmospberic particles. For the entire duration of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) miss ion, seven of these foils collected particles arriving from seven diff erent directions as seen from the spacecraft. In the mass spectrometri c analysis of the noble gas component of these particles, we have dete cted the isotopes of He-3, He-4, Ne-20, and Ne-22. In the foil analyse s carried out so far, we find a distribution of particle arrival direc tions which shows that a significant part of the trapped particles are indeed interstellar atoms. The analysis needed to subtract the compet ing fluxes of magnetospheric and atmospheric particles is still in pro gress. The hope of this experiment is to investigate the noble gas iso topic ratios of this interstellar sample of matter which originated ou tside the solar system.