Abstract: Magneto Plasma Sail (MPS) is spacecraft propulsion that produces an artificial magnetosphere to block solar wind particles, and thus imparts momentum to accelerate a spacecraft. In the present study, we conducted three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations on small-scale magnetospheres to investigate thrust characteristics of MPS, in which the magnetosphere is inflated by an additional plasma injection. As a result, we revealed that finite thrust generation and the increase in thrust is obtained in the small-scale magnetosphere even if the electron kinetics is taken into consideration. The thrust of MPS (0.58 mN @ magnetic moment M=1.3 10 7 Wb·m) becomes up to 97 times larger than that of the original magnetic sail (6.0 µN). It was also revealed that the thrust gain of MPS (thrust of MPS / (thrust of magnetic sail + thrust of plasma jet)) is more than unity (up to 5.2). However, the relation of trade-off between specific impulse, thrust-mass ratio and thrustpower ratio is revealed and the optimal design of the spacecraft and missions are required for the realization of MPS. Nomenclatur
