Enhanced Pre-Sheath Modeling for Tethered Satellite Systems: A Comprehensive Analysis of TSS-1R Electron Current and Experimental Validation

Abstract

Improvements of investigations on the Tethered Satellite System (TSS)-1R electron current enhancement due to magnetic limited collections are reported. New analytical expressions are obtained for the potential and temperature changes across the satellite tethering cable pre-sheath. The mathematical treatments are more rigorous than one past approach. More experimental measurements collected in the ionosphere during the TSS-1R mission are adopted for validations. Our relations developed offer two bounding curves for these data points successfully; the average of these two curves is close to the curve-fitting results for the measurements; and an average of 2.95 times larger than the Parker-Murphy theory is revealed. The results indicate that including the pre-sheath analysis is important to compute the electron current enhancement due to magnetic limitations. The second novel contribution includes extra space measurements, which further validated the new theoretical formula.