Assessment of Worst GEO Plasma Environmental Models for Spacecraft Surface Charging by SPIS

抄録

Assessment of the worst plasma environment for spacecraft surface charging in the geosynchronous Earth orbits (GEO) is important for spacecraft designs and operations, because it could cause spacecraft anomalies due to surface charging with resultant discharging arcs. The differential charging potential of spacecraft surfaces is considered to generate the harmful discharging arcs. There was no common standard of the worst GEO plasma environment for analysis of differential surface charging to prevent and mitigate the anomalies. Therefore in order to determine a new International Organization for Standardization (ISO) document for the purpose, a round-robin simulation was performed using the NASCAP-2k and MUSCAT. We perform surface charging simulations by Spacecraft Plasma Interaction Software (SPIS) as same as the round-robin simulation and evaluate the worst GEO plasma environmental models showing the detailed results. This study will contribute to a revision of the ISO document and also apply spacecraft charging risk estimations as space weather forecast.