• cella
• compatibilità
• conrollo
• corrente
• diagnostiche
• disegno
• elettromagnetica
• elettrostatica
• fotovoltaico
• missione
• plasma
• progetto
• scarica
• spazio
• tabella
• tecnico
• termico

Abstract

In this work the activity of study deals with the preliminary design of a measuring instrumentation system consisting of two parts: an electric propulsion diagnostics package, and an active plasma diagnostics package. This system must perform the measurements in the cosmic space to achieve the following goals of the SPES mission (SPES, Space Plasma Experiment Satellite):
a) Accomplish a set of active plasmas physics experiments involving magnetized streaming plasmas;
b) Demonstrate in-flight performance and operation capability of the 100 Watt Hall effect thruster (HT – 100), produced by Alta SpA;
c) Collect data on the Van Allen belts environment effects on solar cells and electronic components.
This thesis begins introducing the mission outline, the problems related to the space environment hardness and disclosing some ideas about how to achieve the mission goals. This work has been developed essentially in three steps:
1. Search and review of papers on plasma diagnostics and instruments which are available to achieve the mission objectives; for each instrument: architecture, physical principle of its functioning, and performances have been analyzed.
2. Diagnostics system design; a selection of instruments to form instruments packages, which are capable to achieve the mission objectives respecting its constraints, has been made; for each diagnostics package at least a plausible geometric configuration has been designed.
3. Selection between the diagnostics packages configurations; the final choice of diagnostic system has been made on the basis of: performances, reliability and low cost criteria.
All along this work emphasis was put on the instruments for the diagnostics of interaction between plasma thrusters and spacecraft. So this work presents some background reading about plasma physics and what the current practice is in terms of plume - spacecraft interactions and performance diagnostics. Moreover an approach to the problems of satellite subsystems electromagnetic compatibility has been made: electromagnetic interference, and electrostatic discharge. Then a quick review of methods, techniques and experimental setups, used to tackle this problem, has been made from reference papers.