Simulation and analysis of spacecraft charging using SPIS-GEO and NASCAP-GEO
Résumé
Spacecraft charging issues related to GEO concern all dielectric surfaces susceptible to charge to significant voltages because of the space environment. Testing materials helps defining margins and keeping a good level of confidence on spacecraft resistance to damaging effects. Another aspect of spacecraft charging analysis relies on numerical simulation. Several tools aims at calculating surface charging in harsh environments, in the energy range of some to hundreds of keV, produced by geomagnetic sub storms. Main codes include: NASCAP, SPIS, MUSCAT and Coulomb-2. They use different numerical and sometimes physical models and cross checking their results is a progress need to get better confidence in simulations performed by spacecraft prime manufacturers. The objective of this paper is to simulate different GEO spacecraft configurations with NASCAP and SPIS and to compare the results, both in terms of absolute and differential potentials. The first section corresponds to SCATHA spacecraft. The second part of this paper presents efforts to model a modern telecom spacecraft. Lastly, we conclude on the reliability of the simulations performed and possible rooms for modelling amelioration.
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