Study on active spacecraft charging model and its application to space propulsion system

摘要

Spacecraft charging is one of the most common problems in designing spacecraft. Although the amount of charging varies according to the surrounding environment and the material properties of the spacecraft surface, it is practically impossible to avoid charging because ambient plasmas are present everywhere in space. Recently, a variety of new space propulsion systems utilize spacecraft charging, that is, orbital control techniques that utilize electrostatic and electromagnetic forces have been proposed. These orbital control methods provide propellant-less spacecraft orbital control and a very lightweight propulsion system compared with conventional chemical and electrical propulsion systems. These previous works, however, studied the problem fromthe standpoint of orbital dynamics, and typically assumed some feasible value of surface charge and then computed orbital trajectories or relative motions between two spacecrafts. To evaluate the performance and feasibility of such systems, it is necessary to understand active spacecraft charging. The purpose of this thesis is to model active spacecraft charging and the related phenomenon for evaluating the performance under realistic conditions from the perspective of plasma physics.