Improving magnetosphere in situ observations using solar sails

Past and current magnetosphere missions employ conventional spacecraft formations for in situ observations of the geomagnetic tail. Conventional spacecraft flying in inertially fixed Keplerian orbits are only aligned with the geomagnetic tail once per year, since the geomagnetic tail is always aligned with the Earth-Sun line, and therefore, rotates annually. Solar sails are able to artificially create sun-synchronous orbits such that the orbit apse line remains aligned with the geomagnetic tail line throughout the entire year. This continuous presence in the geomagnetic tail can significantly increase the science phase for magnetosphere missions. In this paper, the problem of solar sail formation design is explored using nonlinear programming to design optimal two-craft, triangle, and tetrahedron solar sail formations, in terms of formation quality and formation stability. The designed formations are directly compared to the formations used in NASA’s Magnetospheric Multi-Scale mission.     

Geomagnetic cutoffs: a review for space dosimetry applications.

The earth's magnetic field acts as a shield against charged particle radiation from interplanetary space, technically described as the geomagnetic cutoff. The cutoff rigidity problem (except for the dipole special case) has "no solution in closed form". The dipole case yields the Stormer equation which has been repeatedly applied to the earth in hopes of providing useful approximations of cutoff rigidities. Unfortunately the earth's magnetic field has significant deviations from dipole geometry, and the Stormer cutoffs are not adequate for most applications. By application of massive digital computer power it is possible to determine realistic geomagnetic cutoffs derived from high order simulation of the geomagnetic field. Using this technique, "world-grids" of directional cutoffs for the earth's surface and for a limited number of satellite altitudes have been derived. However, this approach is so expensive and time consuming it is impractical for most spacecraft orbits, and approximations must be used. The world grids of cutoff rigidities are extensively used as lookup tables, normalization points and interpolation aids to estimate the effective geomagnetic cutoff rigidity of a specific location in space. We review the various options for estimating the cutoff rigidity for earth-orbiting satellites.     

The automatic detection of geomagnetic-storm sudden commencements

Storm Sudden Commencements (SSCs) are sharp offsets in the global geomagnetic field H component which accompany some geomagnetic storms. SSC signatures, which are a strong function of geographic location and local time, are usually explained as the result of magnetospheric and ionospheric responses to a compression caused by propagating discontinuities in the solar wind. The Space Environment Services Center (SESC) in Boulder, Colorado, has recently instituted an SSC ‘alarm’ to alert both forecasters and customers of potential geomagnetic storm conditions. The present software design looks for rapid change, coincidental within one minute, in the H-components among any two of the three magnetometers received in real-time at the SESC. These are the Boulder magnetometer, and the magnetometers on board the GOES geosynchronous satellites located at 75° and 135° West Longitude. The results are not yet satisfactory and offer some clues toward a better understanding of the physics of SSCs.     

Modified gradiometer technique applied to Double Star (TC-1)

On TC-1 (Tan Ce 1), the equatorial spacecraft of the Double Star mission, a strong spin-synchronized magnetic interference from the solar panels was observed. In-flight correction techniques for spinning spacecraft that are based on minimizing spin tones in the spin-aligned component and in the magnitude of the ambient magnetic field are therefore not possible in this case. However, due to the fortunate situation that the spacecraft carries two flux-gate magnetometers on the same boom (at 0.5 m distance from each other), the spacecraft field effects could be removed from the spin-averaged data to achieve 0.2 nT relative accuracy, by using a gradiometer technique. Methodology and results are presented. The obtained accuracy allows the use of the data in multi-spacecraft studies together with the Cluster satellites.     

Formation flying reconfiguration manoeuvres via environmental forces in highly elliptical orbits

A study on reconfiguration manoevres applied to a tetrahedral formation in highly elliptical orbits is proposed, by using a propellantless solution. The manoeuvring strategy consists in exploiting certain environmental forces, specifically those provided by solar radiation pressure and atmospheric drag, by actively controlling the satellites’ attitudes. Through inverse dynamics particle swarm optimization the optimal attitudes required for the manoeuvres are evaluated, whereas the configuration’s evolution is simulated by a high-fidelity orbital simulator. The goal of the reconfiguration problem is to find an optimal control in order for the four spacecraft to reach a desired configuration in a specified portion of orbit, where the desired configuration is evaluated by a shape and size geometric parameter. By increasing the manoeuvring time and the satellites’ area to mass ratio, all the case studies considered are successfully verified.     

Results from the ESA SREM monitors and comparison with existing radiation belt models

The Standard Radiation Environment Monitor (SREM) is a simple particle detector developed for wide application on ESA satellites. It measures high-energy protons and electrons of the space environment with a 20° angular resolution and limited spectral information. Of the ten SREMs that have been manufactured, four have so far flown. The first model on STRV-1c functioned well until an early spacecraft failure. The other three are on-board, the ESA spacecraft INTEGRAL, ROSETTA and PROBA-1. Another model is flying on GIOVE-B, launched in April 2008 with three L-2 science missions to follow: both Herschel and Planck in 2008, and GAIA in 2011). The diverse orbits of these spacecraft and the common calibration of the monitors provides a unique dataset covering a wide range of B-L* space, providing a direct comparison of the radiation levels in the belts at different locations, and the effects of geomagnetic shielding. Data from the PROBA/SREM and INTEGRAL/IREM are compared with existing radiation belt models.     

Direct comparison of transient radiation belt topology and dynamics in 1991 based on measurements onboard Mir space station and NOAA satellite.

In March 1991 the CRRES spacecraft measured a new transient radiation belt resulting from a solar proton event and subsequent geomagnetic disturbance. The presence of this belt was also noted by dosimeter-radiometers aboard the Mir space station (approx. 400 km, 51 degrees orbit) and by particle telescopes on the NOAA-10 spacecraft (850 km, 98 degrees). This event provides a unique opportunity to compare particle flux and dose measurements made by different instruments in different orbits under changing conditions. We present here a comparison of the measurements made by the different detectors. We discuss the topology and dynamics of the transient radiation belt over a period of more than one year.     

近地轨道集群航天器电磁编队飞行非线性反馈控制方法

针对近地轨道集群航天器电磁编队飞行的动力学和控制问题, 提出了一种非线性反馈控制方法. 基于电磁力模型和地磁场模型, 分析了地磁场对近地轨道电磁编队的影响; 建立了集群航天器电磁编队高精度相对轨道动力学模型; 基于Lyapunov稳定性理论设计了一种非线性反馈控制律, 利用该方法对两星电磁编队维持控制进行了仿真验证. 仿真结果表明, 地磁场引起的电磁干扰力可以忽略, 但是电磁干扰力矩的影响必须考虑; 近地轨道集群航天器电磁编队是可控的, 所设计的控制方法是可行的.      

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.     

Precise orbit determination and baseline consistency assessment for Swarm constellation

Precise orbit determination (POD) and precise baseline determination (PBD) of Swarm satellites with 4 years of data are investigated. Ambiguity resolution (AR) plays a crucial role in achieving the best orbit accuracy. Swarm POD and PBD based on single difference (SD) AR and traditional double difference (DD) AR methods are explored separately. Swarm antenna phase center variation (PCV) corrections are developed to further improve the orbit determination accuracy. The code multipath of C1C, C1W and C2W observations is first evaluated and clear variations in code noise related to different receiver settings are observed. Carrier phase residuals of different time periods and different loop tracking settings of receiver are studied to explore the effect of ionospheric scintillation on POD. The reduction of residuals in the polar and geomagnetic equator regions confirms the positive impact of the updated carrier tracking loops (TLs) on POD performance. The SD AR orbits and orbits with float ambiguity (FA) are compared with the Swarm precise science orbits (PSOs). An average improvement of 27 %, 4 % and 16 % is gained in along-track, cross-track and radial directions by fixing the ambiguity to integer. For Swarm-A/B and Swarm-B/C formations, specific days are selected to perform the DD AR-based POD during which the average distance of the formation satellites is less than 5000 km. Satellite laser ranging (SLR) observations are employed to validate the performance of FA, SD AR and DD AR orbits. The consistency between the SD AR orbits and SLR data is at a level of 10 mm which shows an improvement of 25 % when comparing with the FA results. An SLR residuals reduction of 15 % is also achieved by the DD AR solution for the selected days. Precise relative navigation is also an essential aspect for spacecraft formation flying missions. The closure error method is proposed to evaluate the baseline precision in three dimensions. A baseline precision of 1–3 mm for Swarm-A/C formation and 3–5 mm for Swarm-A/B and Swarm-B/C satellite pairs is verified by both the consistency check and closure error method.     

基于Tersoff-Brenner势的航天器群图形编队研究

从分子动力学模拟角度提出了一种分布式航天器群导航控制方法,可使行星中心开普勒轨道上的航天器群在有限的感知信息条件下自发实现图形编队.该法基于人工势场技术,主要分为两个部分：改造自C-W方程的外围全局汇聚势场和基于Tersoff-Brenner势的局部塑形势场.前者将各航天器导引至预设汇聚点附近,后者进一步使各航天器自我调整彼此相对位置,最终编成期望构型.此外,引入一速度依赖型耗散项以确保任意初始分布条件下图形编队均收敛.通过地球同步轨道上航天器群正四面体构型（含中心,即金刚石结构单元）编队仿真,验证了所提方法的有效性和优越性.将编队脚本简单修改,该法还可方便用于其它类碳元素同素异形体构型的塑造,如石墨晶体结构单元正六边形等.     

Different space weather effects in anomalies of the high and low orbital satellites

Preliminary results of the EU INTAS Project 00810, which aims to improve the methods of safeguarding satellites in the Earth’s magnetosphere from the negative effects of the space environment, are presented. Anomaly data from the “Kosmos” series satellites in the period 1971–1999 are combined in one database, together with similar information on other spacecraft. This database contains, beyond the anomaly information, various characteristics of the space weather: geomagnetic activity indices (Ap, AE and Dst), fluxes and fluences of electrons and protons at different energies, high energy cosmic ray variations and other solar, interplanetary and solar wind data. A comparative analysis of the distribution of each of these parameters relative to satellite anomalies was carried out for the total number of anomalies (about 6000 events), and separately for high (5000 events) and low (about 800 events) altitude orbit satellites. No relation was found between low and high altitude satellite anomalies. Daily numbers of satellite anomalies, averaged by a superposed epoch method around sudden storm commencements and proton event onsets for high (>1500 km) and low (<1500 km) altitude orbits revealed a big difference in a behavior. Satellites were divided on several groups according to the orbital characteristics (altitude and inclination). The relation of satellite anomalies to the environmental parameters was found to be different for various orbits that should be taken into account under developing of the anomaly frequency models.     

单个航天器对Walker星座中多卫星的近距离接近

通过设计航天器轨道,可使航天器发射入轨后无需机动即实现对Walker星座中非共轨的多颗卫星的快速、近距离接近.给出了该轨道的搜索方法以及基于星座特性的代换法,并给出了仿真示例.      

航天器与空间碎片的混合编队重构控制与应用

针对空间碎片清理问题,提出了一种利用航天器与空间碎片混合编队队形重构控制技术捕获碎片的方法。首先,分析了地/月—日系L2拉格朗日平动点附近的限制性三体环境,并建立了编队卫星相对运动动力学模型;其次,提出了以太阳光压力作为航天器与空间碎片编队队形重构的控制力,实现各从星接近空间碎片的目的;最后,设计了基于线性二次型的最优控制器,并在Matlab/Simulink环境下进行仿真实验。仿真结果表明该方法可控制从星到达期望的位置(空间碎片的位置),且太阳帆板的姿态变化在可控范围内,进而证明了该方案可以应用于复杂空间环境下的碎片清理任务。     

Orbit Design for Twin-spacecraft Space VLBI

Space Very Long Baseline Interferometry (S-VLBI) is an aperture synthesis technique utilizing an array of radio telescopes including ground telescopes and space orbiting telescopes. It can achieve much higher spatial resolution than that from the ground-only VLBI. In this paper, a new concept of twin spacecraft S-VLBI has been proposed, which utilizes the space-space baselines formed by two satellites to obtain larger and uniform uv coverage without atmospheric influence and hence achieve high quality images with higher angular resolution. The orbit selections of the two satellites are investigated. The imaging performance and actual launch conditions are all taken into account in orbit designing of the twin spacecraft S-VLBI. Three schemes of orbit design using traditional elliptical orbits and circular orbits are presented. These design results can be used for different scientific goals. Furthermore, these designing ideas can provide useful references for the future Chinese millimeter-wave S-VLBI mission.      

椭圆轨道编队的构形变化控制方法

推导了椭圆轨道编队的一些典型构形模态,指出椭圆轨道卫星编队的模态不同于圆轨道的构形模态,是极为丰富的。基于T-H方程的解析解,推导了副星在沿航向常值推力作用下的椭圆轨道编队的构形变化控制方法。推导的构形变化控制方法,通过合理的选择控制量的作用时刻,可达到大量节约燃料的目的。最后,给出仿真算例。     

Pc5 Oscillation Analysis by the Satellite and Ground-Based Data

Large amplitude Pc5 event was observed in the space and on ground on August 3, 2001, about three hours after contact of the strong discontinuity in the solar wind with the magnetosphere according to data from ACE and Wind satellites. The Pc5 amplitude was as high as 15 nT in the tail of magnetosphere and about 5 nT at the ground based stations. In the magnetosphere Pc5 waves were observed by Cluster and Polar satellites, which occupied positions in the morning part of the near tail at the close field lines but were parted by distance of 11.5 Re, mainly along the x-axis of the GSM coordinate system. Both compressional and transverse components of the Pc5 wave activity were observed in the space, with the transverse component having the larger amplitude. Time delay between the Cluster and Polar satellites was about 8 minutes, which could be interpreted as a wave propagation from the geomagnetic tail to the Earth with the 150 km/s group velocity. The ground-based Pc5 activity was analysed by using data from the Image magnetometer network. Doubtless demonstrations of a field line resonant structure were found in variations of amplitude and polarization with latitude. Finnish chain of search coil magnetometers observed modulated Pc1 emission simultaneously with the Pc5 wave train. A possibility of non-linear impact of Pc5 wave energy on the plasma and waves in the magnetosphere is discussed.     

The role of scientific ballooning for exploration of the magnetosphere

The magnetosphere is explored in situ by satellites, but measurements near the low altitude magnetospheric boundary by rockets, balloons and groundbased instruments play a very significant role. The geomagnetic field provides a frame with anisotropic wave and particle propagation effects, enabling remote sensing of the distant magnetosphere by means of balloon-borne and groundbased instruments. Examples will be given of successful studies, with coordinated satellite and balloon observations, of substorm, pulsation and other phenomena propagating both along and across the geomagnetic field. Continued efforts with sophisticated balloon-borne instrumentations should contribute substantially to our understanding of magnetospheric physics.     

地磁测量卫星的矢量磁场在轨标定算法仿真

以SWARM为代表的高精度地磁测量卫星对地球磁场探测精度经过标定之后优于0.5 nT,对于开展地磁科学研究具有重要意义。地磁测量卫星通过安装在伸展杆上的矢量磁通门磁强计、标量磁强计和高精度星敏感器,获取测量方向的惯性空间姿态的地磁信息,其中高精度标量磁强计主要用于对磁通门矢量磁强计进行标定。针对地磁测量卫星,研究了矢量磁强计在轨测量误差的校正方法。考虑到矢量磁强计非正交角、标度因子以及偏差的影响,建立磁场矢量线性输出模型;结合标量磁强计的测量值分别设计基于小量近似的线性校正算法和基于参数辨识更新的非线性校正算法;校验两种算法的标定精度,并通过Tukey权重函数改善算法的鲁棒性。仿真结果表明,两种算法校正结果相似,磁场三轴误差可校正至0.5 nT以内,在标量磁强计存在异常值时仍具有较好的校正效果。