Miniaturized Charging Mitigation Shell Instrument for Magnetospheric Cold Plasma Sensors

We propose to improve the capability of next generation plasma instrumentation through the development of a miniaturized charging mitigation shell (CMS) instrument subsystem. It is well-known that positive charging of spacecraft surfaces in sunlight limits the measurement of low-energy plasma populations. For the cold plasma electrons, large fluxes of photoelectrons and secondary electrons emitted by spacecraft surfaces contaminate opportunities to identify the ambient cold electrons. For the cold plasma ions, the species targeted in this proposal, the ions with total energy below the spacecraft potential are denied access to the plasma sensor. In the past, plasma instrument aperture biasing was applied to enable measurement of the cold ions in a sufficiently high density, cool electron environment that kept positive spacecraft charging low. More recently, active spacecraft potential control (ASPOC) using sub-systems incorporating ion emitters helps offset the photoelectron/secondary electron emission that overwhelms the deposition of ambient plasma electrons in tenuous plasma density regions beyond the plasmasphere. Although ASPOC helps reduce the magnitude of positive spacecraft charging in sunlight, it does not eliminate it. Thus, the cold ions remain unmeasurable most of the time unless accelerated by convective processes to energies exceeding the spacecraft potential energy, when they can be observed. Such observations during convection, outflows, and ultralow frequency waves occur occasionally in the outer magnetosphere but are rare in the inner magnetosphere where the cold ions are more likely to be bound by co-rotation. In addition, the measurements by body-mounted plasma instruments can be impacted by non-uniformities in electrostatic potential structure associated with the spacecraft and its booms and antennae. To tailor measurement opportunities and further decrease the impacts of spacecraft electrostatic potential structure on the direct measurement of cold ions, future instruments could be miniaturized and deployed away from the main body of the spacecraft. This proposal describes technology development to enable this option.

Support NASA's Heliophysics strategic science objectives to understand the Sun and its interactions with Earth and the solar system, including space weather. This will be achieved by developing/demonstrating instrumentation technology necessary to address the following science goals: Explore the physical processes in the space environment from the Sun to the Earth and throughout the solar system; Advance our understanding of the connections that link the Sun, the Earth, planetary space environments, and the outer reaches of our solar system; Develop the knowledge and capability to detect and predict extreme conditions in space to protect life and society and to safeguard human and robotic explorers beyond Earth.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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