{"id":37734,"date":"2025-09-02T02:38:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T02:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/37734\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T02:38:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T02:38:08","slug":"study-reveals-cause-of-potentially-damaging-electrical-discharges-on-satellites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/37734\/","title":{"rendered":"Study Reveals Cause of Potentially Damaging Electrical Discharges on Satellites"},"content":{"rendered":"

Using data collected by sensors on the U.S. Department of Defense Space Test Program Satellite 6 (STP-Sat6) in geostationary orbit, scientists have found that the number of electrical discharges on a spacecraft directly correlates to the number of electrons in the surrounding environment \u2014 information that could help them better understand how to protect equipment in space.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"STP-Sat6.<\/a><\/p>\n

STP-Sat6. Image credit: Northrop Grumman.<\/p>\n

Spacecraft environment discharges (SEDs) are transient electrical breakdowns that can damage sensitive onboard electronics and communication systems.<\/p>\n

Researchers have long known that SEDs exist, but they haven\u2019t understood the relationship between the electrons in the space environment and SEDs.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo do that, we needed two sensors on a single spacecraft: one that looked at the number and activity of electrons, and another that looked at the radio frequency signal,\u201d said Dr. Amitabh Nag, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory.<\/p>\n

These SEDs are typically the result of a difference in surface charging caused by electrons accumulating on spacecraft surfaces in orbit.<\/p>\n

Not unlike static electricity on Earth \u2014 when energy builds up as a person walks across a carpet, for example, and causes a spark when a finger touches a door handle \u2014 electrical discharges in the space environment occur when a buildup of energy on the spacecraft eventually reaches a large enough voltage that the energy is released.<\/p>\n

STP-Sat6 has both of those sensors on board, giving the researchers a unique opportunity to simultaneously look at both radio frequency and electron activity data.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were able to see the rate of SEDs reported by the radio frequency sensor and compare it to the activity of electron particles within a certain voltage range,\u201d Dr. Nag said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we learned was that the peaks in SEDs correlated to peaks in electron activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The authors looked at more than a year\u2019s worth of data from the two sensors, identifying more than 270 high-rate SED periods and several hundred episodes of high electron activity.<\/p>\n

In about three-fourths of the cases, peaks in electron activity preceded the SED events by 24 to 45 minutes.<\/p>\n

This delay suggests that the buildup of charge from low-energy electrons plays a key role in priming the spacecraft for electrostatic discharges.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe observed that as electron activity increases, especially in that 7.9 to 12.2 keV range, the spacecraft starts to accumulate charge,\u201d Dr. Nag said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis continues until a tipping point is reached and SEDs occur.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat lead time opens the door for potential forecasting tools to mitigate risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFuture missions could integrate real-time monitoring of low-energy electrons to predict and respond to charging events before they impact operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results<\/a> appear in the journal Advances in Space Research.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Amitabh Nag et al. 2025. Radio frequency transients correlated with electron flux measured on-board the STP-Sat6. Advances in Space Research 76 (6): 3692-3699; doi: 10.1016\/j.asr.2025.07.026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Using data collected by sensors on the U.S. Department of Defense Space Test Program Satellite 6 (STP-Sat6) in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,8304,19,17,29167,133,10214,8913,29168,29169],"class_list":{"0":"post-37734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-electron","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-radio-signal","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-solar-system","15":"tag-spacecraft","16":"tag-spacecraft-environment-discharge","17":"tag-stp-sat6"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}