Modeling of Spacecraft Charging Dynamics Using COULOMB-2 Code

This paper describes modeling of spacecraft charging dynamics which is used in COULOMB-2 code in the case of spacecraft surface complex shape. The modeling of spacecraft charging is carried out via numerically solving the system of differential equations for time variations of local electric charge on every discrete element of the spacecraft surface. The presented computation results are obtained for spacecraft charging in hot magnetosphere plasma for several spacecraft design elements in a time interval of 20–10 000 s. The results are compared with the similar ones obtained with the NASCAP-2k and MUSCAT codes, and a good consistency was found.