Exospheres, the tenuous gas environments surrounding planets, planetary satellites, and cometary comae, play a significant role in mediating the interactions of these astronomical bodies with their surrounding space environments. This paper presents a comprehensive review of both analytical and numerical methods employed in modeling exospheres. The paper explores analytical models, including the Chamberlain and Haser models, which have significantly contributed to our understanding of exospheres of planets, planetary satellites, and cometary comae. Despite their simplicity, these models provide baselines for more complex simulations. Numerical methods, particularly the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method, have proven to be highly effective in capturing the detailed dynamics of exospheres under non-equilibrium conditions. The DSMC method's capacity to incorporate a wide range of physical processes, such as particle collisions, chemical reactions, and surface interactions, makes it an indispensable tool in planetary science. The Adaptive Mesh Particle Simulator (AMPS), which employs the DSMC method, has demonstrated its versatility and effectiveness in simulating gases in planetary and satellite exospheres and dusty gas cometary comae. It provides a detailed characterization of the physical processes that govern these environments. Additionally, the multi-fluid model BATSRUS has been effective in modeling neutral gases in cometary comae, as discussed in the paper. The paper presents methodologies of exosphere modeling and illustrates them with specific examples, including the modeling of the Enceladus plume, the sodium exosphere of the Moon, the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and the hot oxygen corona of Mars and Venus.
Mass spectrometers are valuable tools for the in situ characterization of gaseous exo- and atmospheres and have been operated at various bodies in space. Typical measurements derive the elemental composition, relative abundances, and isotopic ratios of the examined environment. To sample tenuous gas environments around comets, icy moons, and the exosphere of Mercury, efficient instrument designs with high sensitivity are mandatory while the contamination by the spacecraft and the sensor itself should be kept as low as possible. With the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA), designed to characterize the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, we were able to quantify the effects of spacecraft contamination on such measurements. By means of 3D computational modeling of a helium leak in the thruster pressurization tubing that was detected during the cruise phase we examine the physics involved leading to the measurements of contamination. 3 types of contamination can be distinguished: i) Compounds from the decomposition of the spacecraft material. ii) Contamination from thruster firing during maneuvers. iii) Adsorption and desorption of the sampled environment on and from the spacecraft. We show that even after more than ten years in space the effects of i) are still detectable by ROSINA and impose an important constraint on the lower limit of gas number densities one can examine by means of mass spectrometry. Effects from ii) act on much shorter time scales and can be avoided or minimized by proper mission planning and data analysis afterwards. iii) is the most difficult effect to quantify as it changes over time and finally carries the fingerprint of the sampled environment which makes prior calibration not possible.