PEMEM Percentile: New Plasma Environment Specification Model for Surface Charging Risk Assessment

Abstract

The Plasma Environment Modeling in the Earth's Magnetosphere (PEMEM) is a European Space Agency activity supporting the development of a new specification model for the spacecraft surface charging risk assessment. This paper presents a description of the basic model version: the PEMEM percentile model. The model is intended to be used for space missions with near‐equatorial orbits. The model is based on the Van Allen Probes particle measurements inside the geostationary orbit. The model's primary input is a planned spacecraft trajectory. It outputs statistical characteristics of the plasma environment which are expected to be encountered during a mission lifetime. These characteristics include differential electron and proton flux percentiles for a set of energies (percentile spectra), and percentiles of the integrated electron flux. The model covers the energy range of 1–100 keV for electrons and 40 eV–51 keV for protons. Since extreme spacecraft charging usually occurs in the eclipse, the same characteristics can be separately output for the periods when the spacecraft is shadowed by the Earth.