Measurements of the electrostatic potential of Rosetta at comet 67PShow others and affiliations
2016 (English)In: Proceedings of the 14th Spacecraft Charging Technology Conference, Noordwijk, The Netherlands: ESA Publications Division, European Space Agency , 2016, p. Abstract 123-Conference paper, Published paper (Other academic)
Abstract [en]
We present and compare measurements of the spacecraft potential (Vs/c) of ESA:s Rosetta spacecraft, currently in orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, by the Langmuir probe (RPC-LAP) and Ion Composition Analyzer (RPC-ICA) instruments. Vs/c has mainly been negative, driven so by the high (∼5 eV) temperature of the coma photoelectrons. LAP only picks up a portion of the full Vs/c since the two probes, mounted on booms of 2.2 and 1.6 m length, respectively, are generally in- side the potential field of the spacecraft. Comparison to the minimum energy of collected positive ions by ICA shows that this portion varies between 0.7 and 0.9Vs/c, with generally good correspondence between the two in- struments except when local ion production is weak and accelerated ions dominate the flux.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Noordwijk, The Netherlands: ESA Publications Division, European Space Agency , 2016. p. Abstract 123-
Keywords [en]
Rosetta; comets; ESA; spacecraft potential; Langmuir probe; RPC-LAP; RPC-ICA; electrostatic an- alyzer; plasma; coma; ionization.
National Category
Natural Sciences
Research subject
Physics with specialization in Space and Plasma Physics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-273865OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-273865DiVA, id: diva2:1433655
Conference
14th Spacecraft Charging Technology Conference, ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, NL, 04-08 APRIL 2016
Funder
Swedish National Space Board, 109/12, 135/13, 166/14Swedish Research Council, 621-2013-4191
Note
QC 20210225
2020-06-012020-06-012022-06-26Bibliographically approved