Conceptual Project of Interplanetary Spacecraft with Nuclear Power System and Electric Propulsion System for Radar Probnic of Ice Sheet of Europe, Jupiter Satellite

Paper number

IAC-04-R.4.02

Author

Dr. Oleg A. Gorshkov, Keldysh Research Center, Russia

Year

2004

Abstract

Solar wind, a high-velocity plasma flow that originates from the sun, blows hard between the planets. The Earth with its intrinsic magnetic field is poised in such an environment, which renders complicated space plasma around the Earth. Many satellites have been launched to observe the Earth space plasma environment, such as the AKEBONO and GEOTAIL satellites. There are also several on-going projects aiming at the space environment observation in the near future, such as the SCOPE satellite to be orbiting around the Earth and the MMO spacecraft of the Euro-Japan joint BepiColombo mission to Mercury. In order to understand the space plasma phenomena, the interaction of plasma waves and particles is a major science target since it is important for kinetic energy and momentum transportation in the collisionless space plasma. The objective of this paper is to develop a new instrument named One-chip Wave Particle Interaction Analyzer (OWPIA), aiming at a direct quantitative measurement of the interactions. In the conventional measurement, plasma wave observations and plasma particle detections are conducted independently. However, there exists a big gap between the time resolution in the measurement of velocity distributions and the time scale of wave-particle interactions because of the time integration to obtain velocity distribution functions. There are many difficulties of studying the wave-particle interactions via spacecraft observations. On the other hand, the OWPIA conducts quantitative observations of wave-particle interactions by direct ’ E*v’ calculation onboard satellites?(the physical quantity E*v equals to the time variation of kinetic energy of a plasma particle). This new instrument can calculate the kinetic energy flow without the time integration of v. In the OWPIA, there exist several necessary processes before the calculation of E*v. They are waveform calibrations, coordinate transformation, and synchronization of waveforms and particle data. Since these processes should be done in real-time, the specific processing unit is necessary. Considering the power and weight budgets in space missions, we chose the use of the FPGA and we succeeded in developing the FPGA including all necessary functions of the OWPIA. The purpose of this study is to realize the OWPIA under the criteria for future mission. The total power consumption is an important criterion to realize the on-board instrument. Another design criterion is the high real-time process speed. The instrument design philosophies are introduced and the performances of the bread-board model satisfying the design criteria are discussed in the paper.

Abstract document

IAC-04-R.4.02.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-04-R.4.02.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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