High voltage interactions of a sounding rocket with the ambient and system-generated environments

EPSAT (environment power system analysis tool) is used to examine the design of SPEAR III, which is scheduled to fly in early 1991. It will test high-voltage designs in both ambient and system-generated environments. Two of the key questions that the experiment hopes to address are whether or not the earth's magnetic field can cause the current that a high-voltage object draws from the plasma to be far less than the current that would be drawn in the absence of the magnetic field and under what neutral environmental conditions a discharge from the high-voltage object to the plasma will occur. The EPSAT program makes it possible to perform a variety of analyses on a preliminary or conceptual-level description of a system in a short period of time. The calculations presented on SPEAR III are all done for a conceptual-level description. The calculations indicate that the experiment will produce the conditions necessary to address these questions.