Long-term behaviour of photo-electron emission from the electric field double probe sensors on GEOS-2

Abstract

A double probe instrument with a probe separation of 42 m was used aboard the geostationary spacecraft GEOS-2 to measure the ambient electric field. The probes contained built-in pre-amplifiers and were current biased in order to clamp their surface potential near to the local plasma potential while the spacecraft surfaces floated at a more positive potential. Depending on the plasma density, the potential difference ranges between 1 V (dense plasma, N e > 10 cm −3) and more than 10 V (tenuous plasma, N e < 3 cm −3). In the case of the more tenuous plasma, photoelectrons emitted from the probes tend to be picked up by the more positive potential of the wire booms. The net current of this electron flow depends on the spin orientation of the wire booms with respect to the Sun. It occurrs in the data as a spurious signal and was already earlier found to be a function of the spacecraft potential. With data from quiet magnetospheric conditions ( K p ⩽ 2) the long-term variation of the spurious signal was investigated. It turned out to be constant during the initial 3 y of the mission. Afterwards, as from 1981, it became smaller and did so for the following 2 y. In 1983, the end of the 5-y period of available data, it had vanished. The cause of the drop is suggested to be a consequence of the partial removal of the conductive surface layer of the wire booms by sputter effects. Expressions were derived that yield more accurate correction of the data. A valuable by-product of this work is the statistical relation of spacecraft potential and total electron flux.