By modelling and simulating the ESA spacecraft Rosetta in a plasma with solar wind parameters, and simultaneously simulating a particle detection experiment of Langmuir probe voltage sweep type using the ESA open source software SPIS Science, we investigate the features of Rosetta’s envi- ronment in the solar wind and the e↵ect of photoemission from the space- craft on the measurements made by the Langmuir Probe instrument on board Rosetta. For a 10 V positively charged spacecraft and Maxwellian distributed photoelectron emission with photoelectron temperature, Tf = 2 eV in a plasma of typical 1 AU solar wind parameters: ne = 5 ⇥ 106 m3, vSW = 4 ⇥ 105 m/s, Te = 12 eV, Tion = 5 eV, we detect a floating potential of 6.4 (± 0.2) V at Langmuir probe 1. Two models used in literature on photoemission was used and compared and we report a clear preference to the Maxwellian energy distribution of photoelectrons from a point source model with our simulation result.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-206890 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Johansson, Fredrik |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Rymd- och plasmafysik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | FYSAST ; FYSPROJ1010 |
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