Journal
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE
Volume 40, Issue 4, Pages 1257-1261Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/TPS.2012.2186616
Keywords
Rosetta mission; spacecraft charging; SPIS
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Funding
- US Air Force Research Lab
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Plasma measurements by electrostatic probes are influenced by the spacecraft-plasma interaction, including the photoelectrons emitted by the spacecraft. Such effects get particularly important in tenuous plasmas with large Debye lengths. We have used the particle-in-cell code package SPIS to study the close environment of the Rosetta spacecraft, and the impact of the spacecraft-plasma interaction on the electrostatic potential at the position of the Langmuir probes onboard. The simulations show that in the solar wind, photoemission has a bigger impact than wake formation. Spacecraft potential estimates based on Langmuir probe data in the solar wind need to be compensated for these effects when the spacecraft attitude varies. The SPIS simulations are validated by comparison to an independent code.
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