The effect of spacecraft charging on MEFISTO electric field measurements

BepiColombo is an ESA-JAXA mission to planet Mercury currently in design phase. The mission comprises two modules, a planetary orbiter (MPO) and a magnetospheric orbiter (MMO). The mission will study the planet as well as the surrounding magnetosphere and will shed new light on a range of topics, including the formation of the solar system, the evolution of the Terrestrial planets, planetary magnetism, magnetospheric dynamics, and solar wind - magnetosphere interaction. KTH participates with the design and production of the satellite's Electric field instrument, MEFISTO.

The primary goal of this project is to simulate how MEFISTO behaves in different plasma environments and to understand how variations and asymmetries in the satellite's potential might affect the measured electric field. The results will be important input to the requirements on the satellite design. A possible extension is to analyse more general geometries and plasma environments as design input for future instruments.
The simulations will be run in SPIS, a Particle in Cell code for spacecraft-plasma interactions.

Basic knowledge of space and/or plasma physics is required.