Evaluation of Electric Field Probe Onboard Spacecraft Using a 3D Full PIC Simulation

Abstract

A three-dimensional electrostatic full Particle-In-Cell code has been developed to analyze spacecraft-plasma interactions quantitatively. The code is expected to achieve highly accurate computation because it has no robust algorithm. We adopted the code to evaluate the electric field measurement onboard spacecraft, especially under low-density ambient plasma environment with photoelectron emission. In this paper, first, fundamental functions for computation of the electric field were validated in Low Earth Orbit and Geosynchronous Orbit environments by comparing with the thin-sheath limit theory and the thick-sheath limit theory, respectively. Second, the floating potential of a spacecraft model with photoelectron emission in Geosynchronous Orbit was computed to examine the effects of photoelectron emission to the electric potential around the spacecraft. The dependence of the floating potential on the photoelectron temperature was shown in the simulation.