The ion drag force on a spherical grain situated in a flowing collisionless plasma is obtained from the specialized coordinate electrostatic particle and thermals in cell simulation code (SCEPTIC) (Hutchinson 2002 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion44 1953, Hutchinson 2003 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion45 1477, Hutchinson 2005 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion47 71) and compared with recent analytic approximate treatments in the interesting and relevant case when the Debye length is only moderately larger than the sphere radius. There is a substantial complex structure in the results for transonic flows, which is explained in terms of the details of ion orbits. Naturally the prior analytic approximations miss this structure, and as a result they seriously underestimate the drag for speeds near the sound speed. An easy-to-evaluate expression for force is provided that fits the comprehensive results of the code. This expression, with minor modification, also fits the results even for Debye length much smaller than the sphere radius.
Spherical probes at ion saturation in E × B fields