ホールスラスタ高速プラズマ流を用いたベアテザー電流収集に関する地上実験

摘要

Bare-tether systems are one of the greatest efficiency electrodynamic tethered systems. The system with an uninsulatedportion of the metallic tether itself to collect electrons from the space plasma is operated as the power generator orthruster on a satellite. The collection of electrons by a bare-tether depends supposedly on surrounding plasma parameters,magnetic field, the configuration of tether, and the relative velocity of the plasma. Then, ground experiments of asimulated bare-tether were done in order to understand the collection of electrons by a bare-tether using Hall thrusteroperation. We studied how the collection of electrons by a bare-tether were affected by plasma velocity and surroundingmagnetic field. As a result, collection of electrons by the bare-tether sample were dependent on sample radius and not onsample length when the radius was much smaller than the plasma Debye length. Also plasma velocity and surroundingmagnetic field seriously affected the collection of electrons.