Old and new problems in the physics of multicusp magnetic sources for the production of negative H -/Dions are presented and discussed. We emphasize particularly, in this kind of plasmas, both the vibrational and electron non equilibrium energy distributions, the role of Rydberg states in enhancing the negative ion production, the production of vibrationally excited states by the Eley-Rideal mechanism, and the enhancement of negative ion concentrations in pulsed discharges. In appendix I recent cross sections calculations for elementary processes and the theoretical determination of hydrogen recombination probability on graphite surface are illustrated. In appendix II two types of sources are modeled: the first one is a classical negative ion source in which the plasma is generated by thermoemitted electrons; in the second one, electrons already present in the mixture are accelerated by an RF field to sufficiently high energy to ionize the gas molecules.

State-to-state approaches are used to shed light on (a) thermodynamic and transport properties of LTE plasmas, (b) atomic and molecular plasmas for aerospace applications and (c) RF sustained parallel plate reactors. The efforts made by the group of Bari in the kinetics and dynamics of electrons and molecular species are discussed from the point of view of either the master equation approach or the molecular dynamics of elementary processes. Recent experimental results are finally rationalized with a state-to-state kinetics based on the coupling of vibrational kinetics with the Boltzmann equation for the electron energy distribution function.

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Methods of calculation of high-temperature thermodynamic properties for some selected Mars-atmosphere components in the temperature range from 200K to 50000K and results are discussed and compared with previous works. Aspects such as quasi-bound rotational states, cutoff criteria, autoionizing states are considered. Examples of tables are provided.