Study of the Influence of Booms on Spaceborne Electric Field Sensors
伸杆对星载电场探测仪的影响研究

The electromagnetic interferences generated by the spacecraft or other payloads to the spaceborne electric field sensor can be significantly reduced by introduction of booms. However, the boom potential may differ from the sensor; so the boom sheath may extend over the sheath of the sensor probe and affect the electric field measurement. In order to evaluate the amount of disturbance, SPIS (Spacecraft Plasma Interaction System) and Particle in Cell method are used to compute the collected current of the sensor probe under the condition of different potential between the sensor probe and the boom. The plasma parameters, boom and electric field sensor models are got from the DEMETER satellite. The results indicate that when the boom potential is lower than the sensor probe, it introduces small disturbances on the sensor operation, when boom potential is higher than the sensor probe, there is a noticeable change in the sensor current collected. And the higher potential difference between the boom and sensor, the more disturbances will be introduced. With the enlarging of the plasma density, the disturbance is reduced because of the small Debye length.