What is the optimum solar proxy for long-term ionospheric investigations?

The problem of optimum solar proxy is important for long-term and/or climatological studies of ionospheric parameters. Here we focus on possibly different optimum solar proxies for different ionospheric parameters, as they are affected by partly different spectral ranges of solar ionizing radiation. We use yearly average values of foF2 and foE of four European stations with long (1976–2014) and high-quality data (Juliusruh, Pruhonice, Rome, Slough/Chilton), and the global total electron content (G-TEC). Four solar proxies are used: F10.7, Mg II, solar Lymna-alpha flux Fα and sunspot numbers. The most important finding is that the optimum solar proxies are different for different ionospheric parameters. The most suitable solar proxy for foF2 is found to be Mg II, whereas for foE F10.7 evidently outperforms Mg II. Fα and sunspot numbers perform slightly worse but none of four solar proxies performs poorly. F10.7 is favored for G-TEC, to some extent surprisingly, as previous results favored rather Mg II.     

Structural dynamic responses of a stripped solar sail subjected to solar radiation pressure

The stripped solar sail whose membrane is divided into separate narrow membrane strips is believed to have the best structural efficiency. In this paper, the stripped solar sail structure is regarded as an assembly made by connecting a number of boom-strip components in sequence. Considering the coupling effects between booms and membrane strips, an exact and semi-analytical method to calculate structural dynamic responses of the stripped solar sail subjected to solar radiation pressure is established. The case study of a 100 m stripped solar sail shows that the stripped architecture helps to reduce the static deflections and amplitudes of the steady-state dynamic response. Larger prestress of the membrane strips will decrease stiffness of the sail and increase amplitudes of the steady-state dynamic response. Increasing thickness of the boom will benefit to stability of the sail and reduce the resonant amplitudes. This proposed semi-analytical method provides an efficient analysis tool for structure design and attitude control of the stripped solar sail.     

高保真卫星电源负载场景重现系统设计

卫星工作期间整星负载变化较大，多次高精度重现卫星电源负载场景，有助于卫星供配电系统的性能测试和故障排查；但使用真实卫星负载、蓄电池，存在安全性、难以快速重复建立状态的问题，会对蓄电池寿命和单机安全造成影响。设计了一套卫星电源负载场景重现系统，高保真度地记录与重现卫星外电、内电与负载场景，可快速重现供配电现场，辅助卫星测试与故障排查。     

Integrated guidance and control for solar sail station-keeping with optical degradation

Current control approaches for solar sail station-keeping on libration point orbits have not considered the degradation of the sail’s optical properties. However, significant optical degradation could lead to poor station-keeping performance or even complete failure. This paper presents an integrated guidance and control strategy to address this problem by updating the reference orbit based on in situ estimation. An exponential optical degradation model is incorporated into the solar radiation acceleration model, and an on-line reference orbit update approach is incorporated into the station-keeping, coupled with an active disturbance rejection controller. The reflection coefficient is estimated on-line and the reference orbit is updated discretely when the optical properties have degraded by a prescribed amount. This strategy provides discrete updates to the reference orbits such that the perturbation due to the optical degradation is maintained within a small range. These smaller perturbations can be dealt with by the controller’s robustness and station-keeping can be sustained for long durations even in the presence of large optical degradation.     

Solar sail deployment dynamics

The deployment dynamics of a solar sail consisting of four flexible booms and four membrane quadrants are studied. First, previous work on modelling only one membrane quadrant attached to two axially moving beams using time-varying quasi-modal expansion is extended to be applicable to the complete four-quadrant system. This is achieved via “lifting” the quadrant-level matrices into system-level forms by mapping the former’s constituent blocks to the correct partitions in the latter. After the quadrant-to-system conversion of the matrices, the equations of motion from the authors’ previous work readily apply to the complete system. Modal analysis is performed on a constant-length sail to validate the model’s basic foundations against the results obtained by finite element methods in the past literature. Deployment simulation results are presented, numerical parameter studies that show possibility of instability are performed using the system’s eigenvalues, and the stability results are discussed.     

A note on the relationship between sunspot numbers and active days

We have studied the relationship between three different versions of the sunspot number (Group, International and American Sunspot Number) and the number of active days (i.e., the number of days with spots on the solar disk). We have detected an approximately linear relationship for low solar activity conditions. However, this relationship for the International Sunspot Number is very different to the ones obtained with the other versions of the sunspot number. The discordant values correspond to older observations.     

Effect of severe geomagnetic storm conditions on atomic oxygen greenline dayglow emission in mesosphere

Severe geomagnetic storms and their effects on the 557.7 nm dayglow emission are studied in mesosphere. This study is primarily based on photochemical model with the necessary input obtained from a combination of experimental observations and empirical models. The model results are presented for a low latitude station Tirunelveli (8.7°N, 77.8°E). The volume emission rates are calculated using MSISE-90 and NRLMSISE-00 neutral atmospheric models. A comparison is made between the results obtained from these two models. A positive correlation amongst volume emission rate (VER), O, O₂ number densities and Dst index has been found. The present results indicate that the variation in emission rate is more for MSISE-90 than in NRLMSISE-00 model. The maximum depletion in the VER of greenline dayglow emission is found to be about 30% at 96 km during the main phase of the one of the geomagnetic storms investigated in the case of MSISE-90 (which is strongest with Dst index −216 nT). The O₂ density decreases about 22% at 96 km during the main phase of the same geomagnetic storm.The NRLSMSISE-00 model does not show any appreciable change in the number density of O during any of the two events. The present study also shows that the altitude of peak emission rate is unaffected by the geomagnetic storms. The effect of geomagnetic storm on the greenline nightglow emission has also been studied. It is found that almost no correlation can be established between the Dst index and variations in the volume emission rates using the NRLMSISE-00 neutral model atmosphere. However, a positive correlation is found in the case of MSISE-90 and the maximum depletion in the case of nightglow is about 40% for one of the storms. The present study shows that there are significant differences between the results obtained using MSISE-90 and NRLMSISE-00.     

Dynamics of global electron content in 1998–2005 derived from global GPS data and IRI modeling

We analyzed the dynamics of global electron content (GEC) for the period 1998–2005 and compared the estimated GEC with variations of the 10.7-cm solar radio emission and with and with GEC values obtained with IRI-2001. We found a strong resemblance between the curves’ shapes for the experimental and modeled GEC: strong semiannual variations are discernible in these series and both curves tend to increase the absolute GEC value during the period of maximum of solar activity. However, there are some significant distinctions, such as absence of 27-day fluctuations in the series of GEC computed by the IRI-2001. On the contrary, observational GEC reflects well dynamics of solar activity: 27-day variations of GEC are very similar to the ones of the index F10.7, but GEC undergoes a lagging of about of 30–60 h as compared to value of the F10.7 index. The relative amplitude of 27-day variations decreases from 8% at the rising and falling solar activity to 2% at the period of its maximum.     

Modeling of the outer heliosphere with the realistic solar cycle

Time-dependent kinetic-continuum model of the solar wind interaction with the two-component local interstellar cloud (LIC) has been developed recently [Izmodenov, V., Malama, Y.G., Ruderman, M.S. Solar cycle influence on the interaction of the solar wind with local interstellar cloud. Astron. Astrophys. 429, 1069–1080, 2005a.]. Here, we adopted this model to the realistic solar cycle, when the solar wind parameters at the Earth’s orbit are taken from space data. This paper focuses on the results related to the termination shock (TS) excursion with the solar cycle that may help to understand Voyager 1 data obtained at and after the crossing of the termination shock and to predict the time of the TS crossing by Voyager 2.     

Debris flux comparisons from the Goldstone Radar,Haystack Radar,and Hax Radar prior,during, and after the last solar maximum

The continual monitoring of the low Earth orbit (LEO) debris environment using highly sensitive radars is essential for an accurate characterization of these dynamic populations. Debris populations are continually evolving since there are new debris sources, previously unrecognized debris sources, and debris loss mechanisms that are dependent on the dynamic space environment. Such radar data are used to supplement, update, and validate existing orbital debris models. NASA has been utilizing radar observations of the debris environment for over a decade from three complementary radars: the NASA JPL Goldstone radar, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory (MIT/LL) Long Range Imaging Radar (known as the Haystack radar), and the MIT/LL Haystack Auxiliary radar (HAX). All of these systems are highly sensitive radars that operate in a fixed staring mode to statistically sample orbital debris in the LEO environment. Each of these radars is ideally suited to measure debris within a specific size region. The Goldstone radar generally observes objects with sizes from 2 mm to 1 cm. The Haystack radar generally measures from 5 mm to several meters. The HAX radar generally measures from 2 cm to several meters. These overlapping size regions allow a continuous measurement of cumulative debris flux versus diameter from 2 mm to several meters for a given altitude window. This is demonstrated for all three radars by comparing the debris flux versus diameter over 200 km altitude windows for 3 nonconsecutive years from 1998 to 2003. These years correspond to periods before, during, and after the peak of the last solar cycle. Comparing the year to year flux from Haystack for each of these altitude regions indicate statistically significant changes in subsets of the debris populations. Potential causes of these changes are discussed. These analysis results include error bars that represent statistical sampling errors.