New SPIS Capabilities to Simulate Dust Electrostatic Charging, Transport, and Contamination of Lunar Probes

The spacecraft–plasma interaction simulator has been improved to allow for the simulation of lunar and asteroid dust emission, transport, deposition, and interaction with a spacecraft on or close to the lunar surface. The physics of dust charging and of the forces that they are subject to has been carefully implemented in the code. It is both a tool to address the risks faced by lunar probes on the surface and a tool to study the dust transport physics. We hereby present the details of the physics that has been implemented in the code as well as the interface improvements that allow for a user-friendly insertion of the lunar topology and of the lander in the simulation domain. A realistic case is presented that highlights the capabilities of the code as well as some general results about the interaction between a probe and a dusty environment.