By Melissa F. Priebe, Originally published by U-M CLaSP
The Space Physics Research Laboratory at the University of Michigan conducted the launch of the B-SPICE mission from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on November 23, 2024. Called the Beam-Spacecraft Plasma Interaction and Charging Experiment, the B-SPICE mission used a variety of scientific instruments to study spacecraft neutralization via ion emission, while firing a high current electron beam.
Successful completion of this experiment is raising the TRL (technological readiness level) of the spacecraft-charging mitigation scheme, which can be applied to active experiments in the low-density magnetosphere. We sat down with Omar León, an Assistant Research Scientist at the U-M Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, to learn more about B-SPICE.