Electrostatic Phenomena on Planetary Surfaces

Download or read book Electrostatic Phenomena on Planetary Surfaces written by Carlos I Calle and published by Morgan & Claypool Publishers. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The diverse planetary environments in the solar system react in somewhat different ways to the encompassing influence of the Sun. These different interactions define the electrostatic phenomena that take place on and near planetary surfaces. The desire to understand the electrostatic environments of planetary surfaces goes beyond scientific inquiry. These environments have enormous implications for both human and robotic exploration of the solar system. This book describes in some detail what is known about the electrostatic environment of the solar system from early and current experiments on Earth as well as what is being learned from the instrumentation on the space exploration missions (NASA, European Space Agency, and the Japanese Space Agency) of the last few decades. It begins with a brief review of the basic principles of electrostatics.