Rapid plasma bursts and lingering debris clouds driven by hypervelocity dust impacts on Parker Solar Probe: an unintentional active experiment in the inner heliosphere

As the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft passes near the Sun, it encounters dense populations of interplanetary dust at high velocities. When dust grains impact the spacecraft at these speeds, the impactor is vaporized and ionized, along with a fraction of the spacecraft surface material. This creates a plume of rapidly expanding plasma. Some of the impactors encountered by Parker Solar Probe are relatively large, resulting in plasma plumes dense enough to (i) refract natural plasma waves away from the spacecraft, (ii) produce transient magnetic signatures, (iii) and drive plasma waves during plume expansion. Further, some impacts liberate clouds of macroscopic spacecraft material which can result in electrostatic disturbances near the spacecraft that can linger for up to a minute, which is ~10,000 times longer than the transient plasma plume. In this presentation, we discuss the characteristics and statistics of debris-producing events, evidence supporting their origin from dust impacts, plasma plume expansion, and the electromagnetic processes by which both the plasma and macroscopic impact products disturb the spacecraft environment.