TRACE:
CODA (Collisions of Dust Aggregates) is a drop tower experiment in which cm-scale particles are launched at each other at low speeds to study the effects of different particle types on collision outcomes. CODA experiments are run inside a vacuum chamber that falls in our laboratory-scale drop tower facility which provides 0.7 s of free-fall. This enables lower impact velocities than what we can achieve with the table-top experiment. The science goals of CODA and COBRA are the same: to understand the dissipation of energy in collisions at low speeds between different kinds of particles relevant to the early stages of planet formation and the evolution of planetary ring systems.
