Spacecraft Floating Potential Measurements for the Wind Spacecraft

Abstract

Analysis of 8,804,545 electron velocity distribution functions, observed by the Wind spacecraft near 1 au between 2005 January 1 and 2022 January 1, was performed to determine the spacecraft floating potential, ϕ sc. Wind was designed to be electrostatically clean, which helps keep the magnitude of ϕ sc small (i.e., ∼5–9 eV for nearly all intervals) and the potential distribution more uniform. We observed spectral enhancements of ϕ sc at frequencies corresponding to the inverse synodic Carrington rotation period with at least three harmonics. The two-dimensional histogram of ϕ sc versus time also shows at least two strong peaks, with a potential third, much weaker peak. These peaks vary in time, with the intensity correlated with solar maximum. Thus, the spectral peaks and histogram peaks are likely due to macroscopic phenomena like coronal mass ejections (solar cycle dependence) and stream interaction regions (Carrington rotation dependence). The values of ϕ sc are summarized herein and the resulting data set is discussed.