Aluminum Secondary Electron Yield

Accurate modeling of spacecraft charging is essential to mitigate well-known and all-too-common deleterious and costly effects on spacecraft resulting from charging induced by interactions with the space plasma environment. This paper addresses how limited availability of electron emission and transport properties of spacecraft materials—in particular secondary electron yields—and the wide range measured for such properties pose a critical issue for modeling spacecraft charging. It describes a materials charging database being developed, which when used in concert with the strategies outlined herein for best practices for establishing optimized materials properties for spacecraft charging models and specific mission requirements and how these properties may change with prolonged exposure to the space environment, should provide tools for more accurate material selection, increased confidence in charge models, and a concomitant decrease in mission risk.