Accomplishment of multi-utility spacecraft charging analysis tool (MUSCAT) and its future evolution
Abstract
(MUSCAT) is a high value computation tool for analyzing spacecraft–plasma interaction, whose typical example is charging–arcing issue, corresponding to spacecrafts in LEO , GEO and PEO. JAXA and Kyushu Institute of Technology (KIT) started the development as a joint project in November 2004 and the final version of MUSCAT was released in March 2007. The final version includes many important features to simulate spacecraft–plasma interaction and the features can be separated into four parts. The first part is its GUI named "Vineyard". By using Vineyard, MUSCAT users can build a satellite model including not only its geometry but also material properties of the surface. As for the second part, MUSCAT includes many kinds of effects derived from space plasma environment as well as electrical functions of spacecraft. For the third part, MUSCAT can work on parallel workstation with multi-CPU. The last feature is that the computation result by MUSCAT was thoroughly validated by experiments in plasma chamber. The numerical result shows very good agreement with the code validation experiment. We also conducted trial computation of charging analysis on Greenhouse gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) with MUSCAT. One purpose of the computation was prediction of charging status of GOSAT for the real satellite design in combination with the ground test. The other is performance assessment of MUSCAT. After the joint project, expansion and maintenance of MUSCAT will be carried out by "MUSCAT Space Engineering Ltd" which is a new enterprise made of the development team. In future we will try to conduct MUSCAT computation for various spacecrafts and also try to add useful function such as 3D CAD compatibility.
Introduction
The demand for large electric power of satellites has increased risk of failure in power system especially caused by interference with space plasma environment. The investigation by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) revealed that the loss of ADEOS-II, a polar earth orbit (PEO) satellite, was caused by interaction between the plasma environment and its multi layer insulation (MLI) around wire harness [1], [2].
In order to prevent power system failure due to charging like what occurred on ADEOS-II, quantitative analysis of charging–arcing issue from the early stage of satellite designing phase is necessary. Electric potential of satellite body with respect to ambient plasma and differential voltage of each surface component with respect to the satellite body potential are the most important elements to consider charging–arcing issue.
In the situation mentioned above, JAXA decided to develop its own charging analysis tool that can calculate charging status of a polar orbiting satellite jointly with Kyushu Institute of Technology (KIT). It also includes National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), Kyoto University and National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NICT). The numerical tool is named multi-utility spacecraft charging analysis tool (MUSCAT) [3]. It will be used to evaluate the risk of charging in spacecraft design phase, to determine appropriate parameter settings of ground tests by calculating the worst-case charging potential, and to determine whether a given satellite failure is due to charging or not.
In the IAC 2005, the authors reported the development status at an early stage [4]. The frameworks, the time table, basic algorithm of the MUSCAT and some achievements were described. In the IAC 2006, the authors reported many important functions added to MUSCAT and results such as: (1) integration of the GUI and the solver, (2) improvement of code validation by experiment, (3) introduction of some functions simulating physical phenomena, (4) release of the beta version of MUSCAT for users’ test [5].
In this paper, authors are reporting the final version of MUSCAT.
Section snippets
Integration of MUSCAT GUI: Vineyard
GUI function of MUSCAT, named Vineyard, is developed for integrated analyzing environment.
Functions of Vineyard are categorized in five groups: (1) building three dimensional general model of satellite, (2) setting up parameters such as space environment and computation options, (3) converting satellite model and input parameters into numerical data, (4) visualizing computation results and (5) transferring data between client personal computer and server work station.
Frame of "Vineyard" is
Integration of solver function
Algorithm of the solver is described in Refs. [7], [8]. New iteration algorithm for high speed computation is introduced. In the algorithm, satellite saturated potential is roughly predicted by simple approach before applying numerical method of particle tracking (PT). Time integration of surface charge is conducted so that the predicted potential is obtained. PT is iterated until net current becomes zero and real saturated potential is obtained. The method mentioned above can thousandfold or
Experiment for code validation
We report two different kinds of experiments in the paper. One of them was conducted at the facility simulating polar orbit environment, called "PEO chamber," in Laboratory of Spacecraft Environment Interaction Engineering (LaSEINE) in KIT. The schematic of the PEO chamber is shown in Fig. 5. Ambient Xe plasma of 1011–1012 m−3 generated by ECR plasma source and energetic electron beam generated by an electron gun are available in the PEO chamber at the same time, that can simulate the plasma
Summary and evolution for future
The final version of MUSCAT was finally released in March 2007. This is a spacecraft charging analysis software in Japan. Development of MUSCAT started in November 2004 as a joint work of JAXA and KIT, after the serious Japanese satellite failure occurred in October 2003. MUSCAT was expected to be utilized in satellite designing phase by satellite engineers. For this reason, MUSCAT required accuracy of physical modeling and high-speed computation. Moreover, user friendly functions were required
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