A Small EP Spacecraft for Plasma Physics Experiments

An active plasma experiment in space is proposed, involving the generation of an artificial magnetosphere (plasma bubble) attached to a small spacecraft. The streaming plasma bubble interacts with the ionosphere exciting several interesting plasma phenomena, difficult or impossible to observe in the laboratory. The spacecraft is equipped with a low power Alta HT-100 Hall thruster used both as a plasma source and to provide propulsion to change the orbital altitude in a wide range. The proposed experiment makes also an opportunity for flight demonstration and characterization of the Hall thruster, as well as an occasion to characterize the environment effect on the spacecraft subsystems in the LEO-GEO range of orbital altitudes. We present a mission concept and the spacecraft preliminary design for a low-cost mission capable of performing both the active plasma experiments and the thruster flight demonstration.