Abstract: The exhaust plume of attitude control thrusters may have various detrimental effects on spacecraft subsystems. The generated additional torques may reduce the attitude control precision. The convective and radiative heat exchanges by the plume may disturb the operation of the thermal control system. Contamination due to the plume would affect the performance of sensitive components such as optic sensors. In this paper, the vacuum plume field is numerically simulated by the MOC method of a 20 N thruster firstly. Then, the forces and torques induced by the plume impingement to the solar array are derived from the 3D plume impact model. Finally, the displacements of the solar array and the perturbations to the control system are analysed numerically. The pulsed stimulation of the plume shows that there is an appreciable damage on the attitude control precision and stability of the attitude control thruster.