Marcin Pilinski, ASTRA LLC., Geoff Crowley, ASTRA LLC., Eric Sutton, Air Force Research Labs, Mihail Codrescu, NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
Keywords: Space Weather, Satellite Drag, Orbital Prediction
Abstract:
Much as aircraft are affected by the prevailing winds and weather conditions in which they fly, satellites are affected by the variability in density and motion of the near earth space environment. Drastic changes in the neutral density of the thermosphere, caused by geomagnetic storms or other phenomena, result in perturbations of LEO satellite motions through drag on the satellite surfaces. This can lead to difficulties in locating important satellites, temporarily losing track of satellites, and errors when predicting collisions in space. As the population of satellites in Earth orbit grows, higher space-weather prediction accuracy is required for critical missions, such as accurate catalog maintenance, collision avoidance for manned and unmanned space flight, reentry prediction, satellite lifetime prediction, defining on-board fuel requirements, and satellite attitude dynamics. We describe ongoing work to build a comprehensive nowcast and forecast system for specifying the neutral atmospheric state related to orbital drag conditions. The system outputs include neutral density, winds, temperature, composition, and the satellite drag derived from these parameters. This modeling tool is based on several state-of-the-art coupled models of the thermosphere-ionosphere as well as several empirical models running in real-time and uses assimilative techniques to produce a thermospheric nowcast. This software will also produce 72 hour predictions of the global thermosphere-ionosphere system using the nowcast as the initial condition and using near real-time and predicted space weather data and indices as the inputs. In this paper, we will review the driving requirements for our model, summarize the model design and assimilative architecture, and present preliminary validation results. Validation results will be presented in the context of satellite orbit errors and compared with several leading atmospheric models. As part of the analysis, we compare the drag observed by a variety of satellites which were not used as part of the assimilation-dataset and whose perigee altitudes span a range from 200 km to 700 km.
Date of Conference: September 20-23, 2016
Track: Poster