Development of an Experimental Simulator of Magnetic Sail

In order to simulate the interaction between the solar wind and the artificially deployed magnetic field produced around a magnetic sail spacecraft, a laboratory simulator was designed and constructed inside the space chamber (2m in diameter) at ISAS. As a solar wind simulator, a high-power magnetoplasmadynamic arcjet is operated in a quasisteady mode of ∼0.8ms duration. It can generate a simulated solar wind flow that is a high-speed (above 20km/s), high-density (above 1017m-3) hydrogen plasma plume of ∼70cm in diameter. A small coil (18mm in diameter), which is to simulate a magnetic sail spacecraft and can obtain 1.9-T magnetic field strength at its center, was immersed inside the simulated solar wind. Using these devices, the formation of a magnetic cavity (∼8cm in radius) was observed around the coil, which indicates successful simulation of the plasma flow around the coil (simulated magnetic sail spacecraft) in the laboratory.