Abstract
As the power level of Geostationary satellites increases, discharge phenomena on solar array are becoming serious threat to safe operation. Arcs on solar array can short-circuit the satellite circuit, decrease the satellite power, and then cause the satellite permanent failure. To prevent the failure caused by charging and arcing, it is necessary to investigate the mechanism of satellite charging and arcing phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the occurrence condition of a secondary arc by measuring arc plasma characteristics in ground test. We measured the arc plasma temperature and identified the materials emitted using spectrometer at arbitrary time during arc occurring. We investigated the difference of secondary arcs occurrence condition during secondary arcs. From the spectroscopic measurement results, we found that it was necessary for shifting to the secondary arc that the metallic vapor same as the cathode material was emitted. In case of primary arc (PA) dimension changes, the probability of secondary arc and TSA occurrence became high. And plasma temperature was not affected by PA dimension, however the metallic vapor emission of silver was greatly affected. Thus, secondary arc occurrence greatly depends on metallic vapor emission from cathode.
