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The development of deep plasma depletions in the equatorial ionosphere at time of magnetic storms is of particular interest in space and plasma physics as well as in the field of radio communications. Detailed plasma, dc electric field, and wave observations were performed by the Detection of Electro-Magnetic Emissions Transmitted from Earthquake Regions microsatellite through several depletions where the large Debye length may lead to significant disturbances on the measurements of dc electric fields by the double probe instrument. After an overview of the data acquired in a well-developed plasma cavity, we present a numerical simulation study that was undertaken to model the operation of the electric field probes in their actual environment. The initial results indicate that, in low-density ionospheric plasma and depending on the potential difference between the probes and the boom, non negligible errors may arise from the influence of the boom on the probe current collection.

The PicUp3D code is a prototype of simulation software dedicated to quantitative and accurate modeling of spacecraft plasma interactions developed in the context of a European scientific and industrial network Spacecraft Plasma Interaction Network in Europe. It is based on a full three-dimensional kinetic particle-in-cell description of the electrons and the ion dynamics. The use of unstructured schemes in the spacecraft geometrical description has allowed to model successfully realistic geometries. The code is organized around an open and versatile object-oriented library and is fully written in JAVA. This paper presents the basic features and the first validation tests of PicUp3D, which are now made publicly and freely available on the Web. Developed in an open-source approach, it is believed that this code will meet the requirements of the scientific community in terms of geometric and physics accuracy especially for instrument calibration and observation analysis