A prototype plasma source spacecraft discharge device has been developed to control overall and differential spacecraft surface charging. Such charging phenomena have contributed to many satellite operating anomalies and systems malfunctions. The plasma source is based on a unique hollow cathode discharge, where the plasma generation process is contained completely within the cathode. This device can be operated on argon, krypton, or xenon and has a rapid cold start time of less than 4 s. The discharge system design includes a spacecraft‐discharge/net‐charge sensing circuit which provides the ability to measure the polarity, magnitude, pulse shape, and time duration of a discharging event. Ion currents of up to 325 &mgr;A and electron currents ranging from 0.02 to 6.0 A have been extracted from the device. In addition, the spacecraft discharge device successfully discharged capacitively biased plates, from as high as ±2500 V, to ground potential, and discharged and clamped actively biased plates at +5 V with respect to ground potential during ground simulation testing.