The experiment name is B-SPICE, Beam-Spacecraft Plasma Interaction and Charging Experiment, which will use a variety of science instruments to study spacecraft neutralization via ion emission while firing a high current electron beam. This will be very similar to a mission called Charge 2 that was launched in 1985.

B-SPICE is a tethered rocket experiment, slated to launch in 2024, dedicated to study the physics of spacecraft charging induced by an electron beam and its mitigation by a plasma contactor and the newly identified ion emission regime. The experiment studies ion current production, plasma plume expansion, and expellant utilization in relation to mitigation effectiveness to understand how the system may scale for magnetospheric experiments. Successful completion of this experiment will raise the technological readiness level of the described spacecraft-charging mitigation scheme for application to active experiments in the low-density magnetosphere.

The Principal Invetigator is Dr. Gilchrist/University of Michigan