ISSN:
1089-7623
Source:
AIP Digital Archive
Topics:
Physics
,
Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
Notes:
An ion emission instrument has been developed to actively control the electrostatic surface potential of a spacecraft in orbit. Spacecraft surfaces tend to charge positive when their conductive surfaces are partially sunlit, and photoelectrons emitted, and the spacecraft is positioned outside of the very dense plasma region which is referred to as plasmasphere. A small, lightweight instrument with a lifetime of more than 104 h at a nominal emission current of 10 μA was the design goal. The ion emitter is based on the liquid metal ion source principle; a constant stream of liquified indium is evaporated from the tip of a needle and ionized; the ions are then extracted by a strong electric field. The size of the instrument is about 18 by 15 by 23 cm (length×width×height) and the entire instrument weighs about 1.9 kg and consumes 2.4 W of electrical power in the nominal emission mode. An instrument of this type is already operational on the Japanese Geotail spacecraft, while five more instruments are at the stage of flight model assembly for integration on the Russian Interball satellite and the ESA/NASA four-spacecraft Cluster mission. The Geotail instrument is functioning as expected. Preliminary results show that the ion emitter is able to reduce surface potentials of +70 V (highest value observed up to now) down to 2–4 V.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.1143924
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