Assessment of the consequences of the Fengyun-1C breakup in low Earth orbit

On 11 January 2007, the People’s Republic of China conducted a successful anti-satellite test against one of their defunct polar-orbiting weather satellites. The target satellite, called Fengyun-1C, had a mass of 880 kg and was orbiting at an altitude of about 863 km when the collision occurred. Struck by a direct-ascent interceptor at a speed of 9.36 km/s, the satellite disintegrated, spreading the cataloged fragments between 200 and 4000 km, with the highest concentration near the breakup height. By the end of April 2008, 2377 pieces of debris, including the original payload remnant, had officially been cataloged by the US Space Surveillance Network. Of these, nearly 1% had reentered the Earth’s atmosphere. This deliberate act is the largest debris-generating event on record, and its consequences will adversely affect circumterrestrial space for many years.     

小行星防御动能撞击效果评估

以动能撞击防御潜在威胁小行星概念为背景,采用物质点法(Material Point Method,MPM)模拟了铝弹高速撞击S型小行星的过程,将撞击结果导入引力N体–离散元动力学模型中,对其后续演化过程进行仿真,并分析了撞击后碎片对地球的威胁指数。结果显示小行星在高速撞击的作用下部分破碎,大量碎片以与撞击方向相反的速度向外喷射,从而提升了小行星的撞击偏移效果。研究采用了两种不同结构的小行星模型:完整结构(monolithic structure)的小行星在遭受撞击后会喷射出比原小行星小得多的碎片,而碎石堆结构(rubble-pile structure)的小行星在撞击作用下可分裂成大小和速度分布较为均匀的碎片。威胁指数的分析表明动能撞击方式确实有效减小了小行星的威胁程度,撞击后的最大剩余碎片可被成功偏移至安全轨道,但仍有部分碎片会与地球相撞。与完整结构相比,针对碎石堆结构小行星的撞击防御的总体效果更好,次生灾害主要为大质量碎片的撞击。研究方法可用于未来开展防御小行星的动能撞击任务的撞击条件选择和撞击结果预估。     

Active debris removal of multiple priority targets

Today’s space debris environment shows major concentrations of objects within distinct orbital regions for nearly all size regimes. The most critical region is found at orbital altitudes near 800 km with high declinations. Within this region many satellites are operated in so called sun-synchronous orbits (SSO). Among those, there are Earth observation, communication and weather satellites. Due to the orbital geometry in SSO, head-on encounters with relative velocities of about 15 km/s are most probable and would thus result in highly energetic collisions, which are often referred to as catastrophic collisions, leading to the complete fragmentation of the participating objects. So called feedback collisions can then be triggered by the newly generated fragments, thus leading to a further population increase in the affected orbital region. This effect is known as the Kessler syndrome.     

Long-term observations of the trapped high-energy proton population (L < 4) by the NOAA Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES)

The Space Environment Monitor (SEM) onboard the NOAA POES satellites has been measuring the near-Earth charged particle environment since 1978, providing an extensive database that can be used for studying the long-term behavior of this population of trapped particles. POES stands for Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite. These satellites orbit at ∼840 km altitude and at an inclination of 98°. The SEM-1 instrument was flown on the POES satellites beginning in 1978 with TIROS-N and NOAA-6 in 1979 and continuing to NOAA-14 launched in 1995 with the exception of NOAA-9 and NOAA-11 (NOAA-13 failed shortly after launch). Its replacement, SEM-2, has flown on the POES NOAA-15, -16, and -17 satellites (from 1998). Here we present the results of a study on the statistical variations of the high-energy trapped proton environment. Among the detectors in SEM, the four SEM-2 omni-directional proton detectors for energies >16 MeV, >36 MeV, >70 MeV, and >140 MeV provide the data most relevant to this study.     

Resolving electrons from protons in ATIC

The Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC) experiment is designed for high energy cosmic ray ion detection. The possibility to identify high energy primary cosmic ray electrons in the presence of the ‘background’ of cosmic ray protons has been studied by simulating nuclear-electromagnetic cascade showers using the FLUKA Monte Carlo simulation code. The ATIC design, consisting of a graphite target and an energy detection device, a totally active calorimeter built up of 2.5 cm × 2.5 cm × 25.0 cm BGO scintillator bars, gives sufficient information to distinguish electrons from protons. While identifying about 80% of electrons as such, only about 2 in 10,000 protons (@ 150 GeV) will mimic electrons. In September of 1999 ATIC was exposed to high-energy electron and proton beams at the CERN H2 beam line, and this data confirmed the electron detection capabilities of ATIC. From 2000-12-28 to 2001-01-13 ATIC was flown as a long duration balloon test flight from McMurdo, Antarctica, recording over 360 h of data and allowing electron separation to be confirmed in the flight data. In addition, ATIC electron detection capabilities can be checked by atmospheric gamma-ray observations.     

Estimation of the Love and Shida numbers: h2, l2 using SLR data for the low satellites

In this paper we present results for the global elastic parameters: Love number h₂ and Shida number l₂ derived from the analysis of Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) data. SLR data for the two low satellites STELLA (H = 800 km) and STARLETTE (H = 810 km) observed during 2.5 years from January 3, 2005 until July 1, 2007 with 18 globally distributed ground stations were analyzed. The analysis was done separately for the two satellites. We do a sequential analysis and study the stability and convergence of the estimates as a function of length of the data set used.     

GRAS radio occultation on-board of Metop

The GRAS radio occultation instrument is flying on Metop-A and belongs to the EPS (EUMETSAT Polar System). GRAS observes GPS satellites in occultation. Within this work, validation of GRAS closed-loop bending angle data against co-located ECMWF profiles extracted from model fields and occultations from the COSMIC constellation of radio occultation instruments is shown. Results confirm the high data quality and robustness, where GRAS shows lower bending angle noise against ECMWF than COSMIC and in terms of occultations per day, one GRAS ≈ two COSMIC satellites. This is partly due to the operational setup of EPS. For the investigation we focus on two observation periods where updates in the ECMWF (March 2009) and COSMIC processing (October 2009) have improved the statistics further. Bending angles biases agree to within 0.5% against ECMWF and to within 0.1% against COSMIC after the updates for altitudes between 8 and 40 km. In addition, we also analyze the impact of the Metop orbit processing on the derived GRAS bending angle data, where different GPS and Metop orbit solutions are analyzed. Results show that a batch based orbit processing would improve in particular the bending angle bias behavior at higher altitudes. Requirements for the operational processing of GRAS data are briefly outlined, options to ease the use of other positioning system satellites in the near future are discussed. A simplified analysis on the observation of several of these systems, e.g. GPS and Galileo, from one platform shows that about 16% of occultations are found within 300 km, ±3 h, thus providing similar information. A constellation of 2 GRAS like instruments would have only about 10% close-by.     

高速撞击梯度电势靶板产生等离子体诱发的放电

针对在轨运行航天器在空间等离子体环境和空间带电粒子活动下诱发航天器表面梯度电势存在的客观现实,航天器在空间碎片的撞击下会诱发表面带电或深层电介质带电的航天器放电。为了在实验室模拟航天器表面存在电势差的真实情况,采用对航天器外表面分割的方法,在分割的表面间预留不同间距且在2靶板间加装电阻的方法创造具有梯度电势的高电势2A12铝板作为靶板。利用自行构建的梯度电势靶板的充放电测试系统、超高速相机采集系统和二级轻气炮加载系统,开展高速撞击梯度电势2A12铝靶的实验室实验。实验中,弹丸以入射角度为60°（弹道与靶板平面的夹角）、撞击速度约为3 km/s的条件撞击间距分别为2、3、4和5 mm的2A12铝高电势靶板,利用电流探针和电压探针采集放电电流和放电电压。实验结果表明:放电产生的等离子体形成了高电势与低电势靶板间的放电通道,且在梯度电势靶板间距分别为2、3 mm时诱发了一次放电,放电电流随高低电势靶板间间距的增加而减小;在梯度电势靶板间距分别为4、5 mm时诱发了二次放电,放电电流随高低电势靶板间间距的增加变化不明显。      

Energy spectrum of proton flux near geomagnetic equator at low altitudes

The results of proton energy (tens keV – several MeV) spectrum measurements near geomagnetic equator (L < 1.15) at low altitudes (<1000 km) are presented. We used data of experiments onboard ACTIVE, SAMPEX, NOAA TIROS-N satellites and SPRUT-VI (MIR station) and cover a time range of about 30 years (including previous measurements). It was found that the kappa-distribution function fits the experimental spectrum with the best correlation coefficient. A comparison of energy spectra of near-equatorial protons and ring-current protons was made. Using the estimation of the life time of near-equatorial protons we explain the difference in spectral indices of radiation belt and near-equatorial proton formation. We conclude that the ring current is the main source of the near-equatorial protons.     

Comparison of self-healing ionomer to aluminium-alloy bumpers for protecting spacecraft equipment from space debris impacts

This paper discusses the impact behavior of a self-healing ionomeric polymer and compares its protection capability against space debris impacts to that of simple aluminium-alloy bumpers. To this end, 14 impact experiments on both ionomer and Al-7075-T6 thin plates with similar surface density were made with 1.5 mm aluminium spheres at velocity between 1 and 4 km/s.     

Atmosphere sounding by GPS radio occultation: First results from TanDEM-X and comparison with TerraSAR-X

On 21 June 2010 the TerraSAR-X satellite was joined by the TanDEM-X satellite. A Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) experiment using the twin satellites has been carried out to estimate the precision of GPS atmospheric soundings. For the Day Of Year (DOY) 330–336, 2011, we analyze phase and amplitude data recorded by GPS receivers separated by a few hundred meters in a low earth orbit and derive collocated atmospheric refractivity profiles. In the altitude range 10–20 km the standard deviation between TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X refractivity does not exceed 0.15%. The standard deviation is rapidly increasing for lower and higher altitudes; close to the surface and at an altitude of 30 km the standard deviation reaches 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively. Systematic deviations between TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X refractivity in the considered altitude range (0–30 km) are negligible. The results confirm the anticipated high precision of the GPS RO technique. However, the difference in the retrieved refractivity in the lower troposphere for different Open Loop (OL) signal tracking parameters, altered onboard TanDEM-X for DOY 49–55, 2012, calls for an in depth analysis. At the moment we can not exclude that a potential bias in the OL Doppler model introduces a bias in our retrieved refractivity at altitudes <8$<8$ km.     

Analysis on navigation accuracy of high orbit spacecraft based on BDS GEO and IGSO satellites

To make up for the insufficiency of earth-based TT&C systems, the use of GNSS technology for high-orbit spacecraft navigation and orbit determination has become a new technology. It is of great value to applying Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) and Inclined GeoStationary Orbit (IGSO) navigation satellites for supporting the navigation of high-orbit spacecraft since there are three different types of navigation satellites in BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS): Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), GEO and IGSO. This paper conducts simulation experiments based on Two-Line Orbital Element (TLE) data to analyze and demonstrate the role of these satellites in the navigation of high-orbit spacecraft. Firstly, the spacecraft in GEO was used as the target satellite to conduct navigation experiments. Experiments show that for the spacecraft on the GEO orbit, after adding GEO and IGSO respectively on the basis of receiving MEO navigation satellite signals, the accuracies were improved by 7.22 % and 6.06 % respectively. When adding both GEO and IGSO navigation satellites at the same time, the accuracy can reach 16 m. In the second place, navigation and positioning experiments were carried out on three high elliptical orbit (HEO) satellites with different semimajor axis (32037.2 km, 42385.9 km, 67509.6 km). The experiments show that the number of visible satellites has been improved significantly after adding GEO and IGSO navigation satellites at the same time. The visible satellites in these three orbits were improved by 32.84 %, 41.12 % and 37.68 %, respectively compared with only observing MEO satellites.The RMS values of the navigation positioning errors of these three orbits are 25.59 m, 87.58 m and 712.48 m, respectively.     

Design and performances of laser retro-reflector arrays for Beidou navigation satellites and SLR observations

Beidou is the regional satellite navigation system in China, consisting of three kinds of orbiting satellites, MEO, GEO and IGSO, with the orbital altitudes of 21500–36000 km. For improving the accuracy of satellites orbit determination, calibrating microwave measuring techniques and providing better navigation service, all Beidou satellites are equipped with laser retro-reflector arrays (LRAs) to implement high precision laser ranging. The paper presents the design of LRAs for Beidou navigation satellites and the method of inclined installation of LRAs for GEO satellites to increase the effective reflective areas for the regional ground stations. By using the SLR system, the observations for Beidou satellites demonstrated a precision of centimeters. The performances of these LRAs on Beidou satellites are very excellent.     

Kinetic temperature and carbon dioxide from broadband infrared limb emission measurements taken from the TIMED/SABER instrument

The Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) experiment is one of four instruments on NASA’s Thermosphere–Ionosphere–Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) satellite. SABER measures broadband infrared limb emission and derives vertical profiles of kinetic temperature (Tk) from the lower stratosphere to approximately 120 km, and vertical profiles of carbon dioxide (CO₂) volume mixing ratio (vmr) from approximately 70 km to 120 km. In this paper we report on SABER Tk/CO₂ data in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) region from the version 1.06 dataset. The continuous SABER measurements provide an excellent dataset to understand the evolution and mechanisms responsible for the global two-level structure of the mesopause altitude. SABER MLT Tk comparisons with ground-based sodium lidar and rocket falling sphere Tk measurements are generally in good agreement. However, SABER CO₂ data differs significantly from TIME-GCM model simulations. Indirect CO₂ validation through SABER-lidar MLT Tk comparisons and SABER-radiation transfer comparisons of nighttime 4.3 μm limb emission suggest the SABER-derived CO₂ data is a better representation of the true atmospheric MLT CO₂ abundance compared to model simulations of CO₂ vmr.     

Temperature comparison between CHAMP radio occultation and TIMED/SABER measurements in the lower stratosphere

Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver on the CHAllenging Mini-satellite Payload (CHAMP) and the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument, one of four on board the TIMED satellite, provide middle atmosphere temperature profiles by Radio Occultation (RO) and limb viewing infrared emission measurements, respectively. These temperature profiles retrieved by two different techniques in the stratosphere are compared with each other using more than 1300 correlative profiles in March, September and December 2005. The over-all mean differences averaged over 15 and 35 km are approximately −2 K and standard deviation is less than 3 K. Below 20 km of altitude, relatively small mean temperature differences ∼1 K are observed in wide latitudinal range except for June (during the SABER nighttime observation). In the middle to low latitudes, between 30°S and 30°N, the temperature difference increases with height from ∼0–1 K at 15 km, to ∼−4 K at 35 km of altitude. Large temperature differences about −4 to −6 K are observed between 60°S and 30°N and 31–35 km of altitude for all months and between 0° and 30°N below 16 km during June (nighttime).     

Analysis of electron content variations over Japan during solar minimum: Observations and modeling

Comparative analysis of GPS TEC data and FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC radio occultation measurements was carried out for Japan region during period of the extremely prolonged solar minimum of cycle 23/24. COSMIC data for different seasons corresponded to equinox and solstices of the years 2007–2009 were analyzed. All selected electron density profiles were integrated up to the height of 700 km (altitude of COSMIC satellites), the monthly median estimates of Ionospheric Electron Content (IEC) were retrieved with use of spherical harmonics expansion. Monthly medians of TEC values were calculated from diurnal variations of GPS TEC estimates during considered month. Joint analysis of GPS TEC and COSMIC data allows us to extract and estimate electron content corresponded to the ionosphere (its bottom and topside parts) and the plasmasphere (h > 700 km) for different seasons of 2007–2009. Percentage contribution of ECpl to GPS TEC indicates the clear dependence from the time and varies from a minimum of about 25–50% during day-time to the value of 50–75% at night-time. Contribution of both bottom-side and topside IEC has minimal values during winter season in compare with summer season (for both day- and night-time). On average bottom-side IEC contributes about 5–10% of GPS TEC during night and about 20–27% during day-time. Topside IEC contributes about 15–20% of GPS TEC during night and about 35–40% during day-time. The obtained results were compared with TEC, IEC and ECpl estimates retrieved by Standard Plasmasphere–Ionosphere Model that has the plasmasphere extension up to 20,000 km (GPS orbit).     

Measuring atmospheric density using GPS–LEO tracking data

We present a method to estimate the total neutral atmospheric density from precise orbit determination of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. We derive the total atmospheric density by determining the drag force acting on the LEOs through centimeter-level reduced-dynamic precise orbit determination (POD) using onboard Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking data. The precision of the estimated drag accelerations is assessed using various metrics, including differences between estimated along-track accelerations from consecutive 30-h POD solutions which overlap by 6 h, comparison of the resulting accelerations with accelerometer measurements, and comparison against an existing atmospheric density model, DTM-2000. We apply the method to GPS tracking data from CHAMP, GRACE, SAC-C, Jason-2, TerraSAR-X and COSMIC satellites, spanning 12 years (2001–2012) and covering orbital heights from 400 km to 1300 km. Errors in the estimates, including those introduced by deficiencies in other modeled forces (such as solar radiation pressure and Earth radiation pressure), are evaluated and the signal and noise levels for each satellite are analyzed. The estimated density data from CHAMP, GRACE, SAC-C and TerraSAR-X are identified as having high signal and low noise levels. These data all have high correlations with anominal atmospheric density model and show common features in relative residuals with respect to the nominal model in related parameter space. On the contrary, the estimated density data from COSMIC and Jason-2 show errors larger than the actual signal at corresponding altitudes thus having little practical value for this study. The results demonstrate that this method is applicable to data from a variety of missions and can provide useful total neutral density measurements for atmospheric study up to altitude as high as 715 km, with precision and resolution between those derived from traditional special orbital perturbation analysis and those obtained from onboard accelerometers.     

Laboratory calibration measurements of a piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate cosmic dust detector at low velocities

A cosmic dust monitor for use onboard a spacecraft is currently being developed using a piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate element (PZT). Its characteristics of the PZT sensor is studied by ground-based laboratory impact experiments using hypervelocity particles supplied by a Van de Graaff accelerator. The output signals obtained from the sensor just after the impact appeared to have a waveform that was explicitly related to the particle’s impact velocity. For velocities less than ∼6 km/s, the signal showed an oscillation pattern and the amplitude was proportional to the momentum of the impacting particle. For higher velocities, the signal gradually changed to a single waveform. The rise time of this single waveform was proportional to the particle’s velocity for velocities above ∼6 km/s. The present paper reports on results for the low velocity case and especially discusses the effect of an outer coating of the sensor with a paint, which is used to reduce heating by solar radiation.     

Determination of station positions and velocities from laser ranging observations to Ajisai,Starlette and Stella satellites

The positions and velocities of the four Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) stations: Yarragadee (7090), Greenbelt (7105), Graz (7839) and Herstmonceux (7840) from 5-year (2001–2005) SLR data of low orbiting satellites (LEO): Ajisai, Starlette and Stella were determined. The orbits of these satellites were computed from the data provided by 20 SLR stations. All orbital computations were performed by means of NASA Goddard’s GEODYN-II program. The geocentric coordinates were transformed to the topocentric North–South, East–West and Vertical components in reference to ITRF2005. The influence of the number of normal points per orbital arc and the empirical acceleration coefficients on the quality of station coordinates was studied. To get standard deviation of the coordinates determination lower than 1 cm, the number of the normal points per site had to be greater than 50. The computed positions and velocities were compared to those derived from LAGEOS-1/LAGEOS-2 data. Three parameters were used for this comparison: station coordinates stability, differences from ITRF2005 positions and velocities. The stability of coordinates of LEO satellites is significantly worse (17.8 mm) than those of LAGEOS (7.6 mm), the better results are for Ajisai (15.4 mm) than for Starlette/Stella (20.4 mm). The difference in positions between the computed values and ITRF2005 were little bit worse for Starlette/Stella (6.6 mm) than for LAGEOS (4.6 mm), the results for Ajisai were five times worse (29.7 mm) probably due to center of mass correction of this satellite. The station velocities with some exceptions were on the same level (≈1 mm/year) for all satellites. The results presented in this work show that results from Starlette/Stella are better than those from Ajisai for station coordinates determination. We can applied the data from LEO satellites, especially Starlette and Stella for determination of the SLR station coordinates but with two times lower accuracy than when using LAGEOS data.