TY  - GEN
TI  - Consolidation of surface charging analyses on the Ariel payload dielectrics in the early transfer orbit and L2 space environments
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.3017998
SP  - 122
EP  - 122
AV  - public
ID  - discovery10197939
N1  - This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
PB  - Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)
Y1  - 2024/08/23/
A1  - Focardi, Mauro
A1  - Michelagnoli, Marianna
A1  - Pudney, Maxsim
A1  - Renouf, Ian
A1  - Merola, Pierpaolo
A1  - Carbonaro, Luca
A1  - Noce, Vladimiro
A1  - Vela Nuñez, Marina
A1  - Bolli, Pietro
A1  - Nesti, Renzo
A1  - Chiarucci, Simone
A1  - Dinuzzi, Giacomo
A1  - Tommasi, Elisabetta
A1  - De Persio, Fulvio
A1  - Salatti, Mario
A1  - Brienza, Daniele
A1  - Piazzolla, Raffaele
A1  - Morgante, Gianluca
A1  - Pace, Emanuele
A1  - Preti, Giampaolo
A1  - Micela, Giuseppina
A1  - Malaguti, Giuseppe
A1  - Caldwell, Andrew
A1  - Eccleston, Paul
A1  - Tinetti, Giovanna
N2  - Ariel (Atmospheric Remote Sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large Survey) [1] [2] is the fourth Mission (M4) of the ESA?s Cosmic Vision Program 2015-2025, selected in March 2018 and officially adopted in November 2020 by the Agency, whose aim is to characterize the atmospheres of hundreds of diverse exoplanets orbiting nearby different types of stars and to identify the key factors affecting the formation and evolution of planetary systems. The Mission will have a nominal duration of four years and a possible extension of two years at least. Its launch is presently scheduled for mid 2029 from the French Guiana Space Centre in Kourou on board an Ariane 6.2 launcher in a dual launch configuration with Comet Interceptor. The baseline operational orbit of the Ariel is a large amplitude halo orbit around the second Lagrangian (L2) virtual point located along the line joining the Sun and the Earth-Moon system at about 1.5 million km (~236 RE) from the Earth in the anti-Sun direction. Ariel?s halo orbit is designed to be an eclipse-free orbit as it offers the possibility of long uninterrupted observations in a fairly stable environment (thermal, radiation, etc.). An injection trajectory is foreseen with a single passage through the Van Allen radiation belts (LEO, MEO and GEO near-Earth environments). This is approximated by a worst-case half orbit, prior the injection and transfer to L2, with a duration of 10.5 hours, a perigee of 300 km (LEO), an apogee of 64000 km (GEO and beyond), and an inclination close to 0 degrees. During both the injection trajectory and the final orbit around L2, Ariel will encounter and interact mainly with the Sun radiation and the space plasma environment. In L2 the Ariel spacecraft will spend most of its time in the direct solar wind and the Earth?s magnetosheath with passages through the magnetotail. These three environments, along with LEO and GEO, can lead to the build-up of a net electric charge on the spacecraft and payload conductive and dielectric surfaces leading to the risk of Electro Static Discharges (ESD), potentially endangering the whole Payload integrity and telecommunications to Ground.
ER  -