The Sun can flip the shielding effect of added spacecraft mass
Abstract
Spacecraft structure is usually treated as shielding against energetic particles. We find that the Sun can reverse the effect of adding that structure. Free-falling test masses are the inertial references of gravitational-wave observatories and equivalence-principle experiments; charge accumulated on them couples to stray electric fields and produces acceleration noise that limits sensitivity. In a LISA-like system, increasing the surrounding aluminium from 16 to 24 g cm -2 reduces the stopping-proton population by (2.3 ± 0.5)% at solar minimum but increases it by (17.0 ± 1.0)% at solar maximum, the crossover lying in the deep-solar-minimum regime. Complete 2-24 g cm -2 mass curves show a broad maximum at solar minimum but a monotonic rise at maximum. The reversal arises because added material both attenuates incident protons and feeds a nuclear-processed population into the stopping-energy window. A first-order projection onto published charging rates gives changes of about -2% and +11% in the net charging rate, affecting charge accumulation, discharge requirements and the associated noise budget. The sign of a structural trade is therefore not fixed by the structure alone.
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BibTeX
@misc{maghrbi2026flip,
title = {{The Sun can flip the shielding effect of added spacecraft mass}},
author = {Yasser Maghrbi and Nelson Christensen},
howpublished = {HAL},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.24851},
eprint = {2609.24851},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05756091v1},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The Sun can flip the shielding effect of added spacecraft mass
AU - Yasser Maghrbi
AU - Nelson Christensen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/21
PB - HAL
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.24851
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05756091v1
AB - Spacecraft structure is usually treated as shielding against energetic particles. We find that the Sun can reverse the effect of adding that structure. Free-falling test masses are the inertial references of gravitational-wave observatories and equivalence-principle experiments; charge accumulated on them couples to stray electric fields and produces acceleration noise that limits sensitivity. In a LISA-like system, increasing the surrounding aluminium from 16 to 24 g cm -2 reduces the stopping-proton population by (2.3 ± 0.5)% at solar minimum but increases it by (17.0 ± 1.0)% at solar maximum, the crossover lying in the deep-solar-minimum regime. Complete 2-24 g cm -2 mass curves show a broad maximum at solar minimum but a monotonic rise at maximum. The reversal arises because added material both attenuates incident protons and feeds a nuclear-processed population into the stopping-energy window. A first-order projection onto published charging rates gives changes of about -2% and +11% in the net charging rate, affecting charge accumulation, discharge requirements and the associated noise budget. The sign of a structural trade is therefore not fixed by the structure alone.
ER -