Recently, the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (IntelSat) announced: At nine forty-eight of the world time April 5th, the Galaxy -15 satellite which belongs to the organization had failed and the related business had been transferred to the Galaxy -12 satellite. The monitoring data of GOES-11 satellite which belongs to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (Figure 2) showed that the enhancement of spatial high energy electron, which started from the end of March. In comparison to the usual, the high energy electron intensity had increased by two orders of magnitude. Thus the scientists believed that the most likely reason led to the Galaxy -15 satellite’s failure was spacecraft charging and discharging effects.
Our laboratory recently made progress in this effect study. Some kinds of satellite components sample were designed as shown in the Figure 3----the ungrounded conductor and multi-layer structure, both observed discharge pulse (Fig. 4) in a simulated geosynchronous orbit electron environment, and more study are under way.