How is grounding done on a spaceship?

Robert Frost, Instructor and Flight Controller at NASA

Written Dec 16, 2014 · Upvoted by Aditya Gaonkar, PhD Electrical Engineering & Integrated
Circuit Design, Columbia University in the City of New York
It is extremely important to provide for electrical grounding of the electronics within a spacecraft.  The
space environment can result in high potential voltage and destructive arcing.

Grounding is essentially accomplished using current conducting strips to bring two or more areas to
the same potential difference.

Depending on the size and power usage of a satellite/spacecraft, a scheme is selected.  The two
categories of schemes are SPG (Single Point Ground) and MPG (Multi-Point Ground).  Some vehicles
use a combination of the two.  

With SPG, a single 0-volt reference is selected and a harness is used to connect various points to that
reference point.  This system works best with smaller satellites.

Larger satellites use the MPG scheme.  That setup has one or more planes that are used as reference
planes for the voltage.  This allows for a less massive and complicated harness.

For a vehicle as large as the ISS, it becomes more complex and important. Much of the structure of the
ISS is a dielectric material.  It will have the voltage of the surrounding space, essentially 0-volts.  But
the solar arrays conduct 160-volts.  The result is a 140-volt potential difference across the vehicle that
could be a hazard to crew members and also produce the risk of dangerous arcing.  Here's a picture of a
solar array that experienced such arcing.

The ISS has a piece of hardware called the PCU (Plasma Contactor Unit).  The PCU uses a hollow
cathode assembly to create a low impedance plasma bridge in order to control the spacecraft potential
with respect to the local space plasma potential.  Here's a picture of the PCU.  It's located on the Z1-
Truss.

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