phys.org May 2, 2017
When spacecraft and satellites travel through space they encounter tiny, fast moving particles of space dust and debris. If the particle travels fast enough, its impact appears to create electromagnetic radiation (in the form of radio waves) that can damage or even disable the craft's electronic systems.
A new study published this week in the journal Physics of Plasmas, uses computer simulations to show that the cloud of plasma generated from the particle's impact is responsible for creating the damaging electromagnetic pulse. They show that as the plasma expands into the surrounding vacuum, the ions and electrons travel at different speeds and separate in a way that creates radio frequency emissions.
"For the last few decades researchers have studied these hypervelocity impacts and we've noticed that there's radiation from the impacts when the particles are going sufficiently fast," said lead author Alex Fletcher, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Boston University Center for Space Physics. "No one has really been able to explain why it's there, where it comes from or the physical mechanism behind it."
The study is a step towards verifying the theory of senior author Sigrid Close, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University. In 2010, Close and colleagues published the initial hypothesis that hypervelocity impact plasmas are responsible for a few satellite failures.
More:
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-space-emits-radio-spacecraft.html
