Conditional sea surface statistics and their impact on geophysical sea surface parameters retrieved from SAR altimetry signals

In this study we present an analytical formulation of synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) altimetry signals including narrow banded nonlinear wave fields and conditional statistics between wave elevation displacements, horizontal wave slopes and vertical wave particle velocities. Considering the wave elevation displacements coskewness with respect to horizontal slopes leads to an analytical formulation of the electromagnetic bias within a SAR-mode altimeter stack. This formulation can be either parametrized by the significant wave height (SWH) and mean wave steepness, or in terms of the variance of vertical wave velocities. The effect of conditional vertical wave particle velocity variances with respect to the observed horizontal wave slopes close to nadir incidence angles leads to an effective reduction of the azimuth blurring of SAR-mode stacks. We present here a formulation of this effect by examining JONSWAP ocean wave spectra. In most cases this effect reduces the azimuth blurring by 10% to 30%. Additionally we investigate the effect of a nonlinear wave elevation displacement probability density function (PDF) on estimated geophysical parameters. We were able to show that including an elevation displacement skewness of 0.13 improves significantly the SWH consistency between altimetry and ECMWF Reanalysis v5 ERA5 results.All of these effects are validated with respect to ERA5 model data in the North East Atlantic region and in situ data located in the German Bight and Baltic Sea.The developed model can be used in both SAR and conventional altimetry retrackers.     

Assessment of the close approach frequency and collision probability for satellites in different configurations of large constellations

The Earth orbital environment is drastically changing due to an intensification of the space activities. In particular, several projects of large constellations, proposed for the next years for communications purpose like global internet access, Internet of Things, or for Earth observations, will lead to the deployment of several thousands of new satellites at an unprecedented rate. It is a crucial challenge for space traffic management, which will deal with a great number of satellite conjunctions, potentially causing a collision with damaging consequences for the constellation itself and the space environment sustainability.In this paper, we investigate the close approach frequency and the cumulative collision probability for each referenced constellation. For this purpose, we compute the orbital evolution of satellites in different constellations during the lifecycle, from the deployment to the decommissioning, and we apply the CUBE algorithm and the Foster method to assess the collision probability with the background space debris population assuming a constant uncertainty in position. We show the variation of risk defined by the close approach frequency and the cumulative collision probability as a function of the proposed configuration. In particular, satellites of the Iridium and Kuiper constellation, but also satellite of the Telesat constellation on polar orbits are the most exposed at a collision. Moreover, the decommissioning phase contribute for a major part to the final cumulative collision probability.     

钛合金表面抗激光涂层损伤特性及热效应影响研究

实验研究了钛合金和高反射型陶瓷涂层材料抗连续型激光烧蚀的损伤及温度分布特性，并从热效应影响角度对比分析了二者在抗激光损伤效果方面的差异性。研究结果表明：相比于钛合金，高反射型陶瓷涂层材料能有效增强钛合金基底抗激光损伤的能力；在同等激光功率密度辐照下，陶瓷涂层材料能有效提升钛合金基底耐受激光辐照的时间长度。实验结果表明该陶瓷涂层材料的激光损伤阈值比钛合金高约5.8倍。实验发现陶瓷涂层温升速率高于钛合金，但由于陶瓷材料具有较高的反射特性，以及良好的热吸收和热传导特性，因此能使由激光辐照产生的热量在其表面较快地扩散，而降低向基底方向传导的程度，最终提升陶瓷涂层的抗激光损伤阈值。     

导航卫星中断频次的分析方法

面向导航卫星中断频次的定量分析需求,该文分析导航卫星中断产生的主要原因,给出中断频次分析的流程,并针对分析过程中的三个关键问题,研究提出具体实施方法,包括通过相关性分析快速定位底层中断事件,通过中断树建立指标分析模型,并融合在轨数据、地面试验数据快速预估得到底层功能异常率等。最后通过示例进一步说明中断频次分析过程。该文方法已应用于北斗导航卫星工程。     

Orbit-attitude-vibration coupled dynamics of tethered solar power satellite

A new orbit-attitude-vibration coupled dynamic model of the tethered solar power satellite (Tethered SPS) is established based on absolute nodal coordinate formulation. The Hamilton’s equation of the system is derived by introducing generalized momentum through Legendre transformation. The correctness of the proposed model is verified by an example. The dynamic characteristics of the Tethered SPS are studied using the symplectic Runge-Kutta method. Simulation results show that the orbital radius and the total energy of the system are well preserved. The attitude of the system is unstable when the mass of the bus system is small. However, the attitude stability is dependent on some other parameters of the system, which requires further studies. It is also found that the average tether force/deformation can be roughly estimated by simplifying the solar panel as a particle. The proposed model can be used to study the orbit-attitude-vibration coupled dynamics and control problems.     

Mapping mean lake surface from satellite altimetry and GPS kinematic surveys

Lake water height is a key variable in water cycle and climate change studies, which is achievable using satellite altimetry constellation. A method based on data processing of altimetry from several satellites has been developed to interpolate mean lake surface (MLS) over a set of 22 big lakes distributed on the Earth. It has been applied on nadir radar altimeters in Low Resolution Mode (LRM: Jason-3, Saral/AltiKa, CryoSat-2) in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mode (Sentinel-3A), and in SAR interferometric (SARin) mode (CryoSat-2), and on laser altimetry (ICESat). Validation of the method has been performed using a set of kinematic GPS height profiles from 18 field campaigns over the lake Issykkul, by comparison of altimetry’s height at crossover points for the other lakes and using the laser altimetry on ICESat-2 mission. The precision reached ranges from 3 to 7 cm RMS (Root Mean Square) depending on the lakes. Currently, lake water level inferred from satellite altimetry is provided with respect to an ellipsoid. Ellipsoidal heights are converted into orthométric heights using geoid models interpolated along the satellite tracks. These global geoid models were inferred from geodetic satellite missions coupled with absolute and regional anomaly gravity data sets spread over the Earth. However, the spatial resolution of the current geoid models does not allow capturing short wavelength undulations that may reach decimeters in mountaineering regions or for rift lakes (Baikal, Issykkul, Malawi, Tanganika). We interpolate in this work the geoid height anomalies with three recent geoid models, the EGM2008, XGM2016 and EIGEN-6C4d, and compare them with the Mean Surface of 22 lakes calculated using satellite altimetry. Assuming that MLS mimics the local undulations of the geoid, our study shows that over a large set of lakes (in East Africa, Andean mountain and Central Asia), short wavelength undulations of the geoid in poorly sampled areas can be derived using satellite altimetry. The models used in this study present very similar geographical patterns when compared to MLS. The precision of the models largely depends on the location of the lakes and is about 18 cm, in average over the Earth. MLS can serve as a validation dataset for any future geoid model. It will also be useful for validation of the future mission SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) which will measure and map water heights over the lakes with a high horizontal resolution of 250 by 250 m.     

A robust object-based shadow detection method for cloud-free high resolution satellite images over urban areas and water bodies

Unwanted contrast in high resolution satellite images such as shadow areas directly affects the result of further processing in urban remote sensing images. Detecting and finding the precise position of shadows is critical in different remote sensing processing chains such as change detection, image classification and digital elevation model generation from stereo images. The spectral similarity between shadow areas, water bodies, and some dark asphalt roads makes the development of robust shadow detection algorithms challenging. In addition, most of the existing methods work on pixel-level and neglect the contextual information contained in neighboring pixels. In this paper, a new object-based shadow detection framework is introduced. In the proposed method a pixel-level shadow mask is built by extending established thresholding methods with a new C₄ index which enables to solve the ambiguity of shadow and water bodies. Then the pixel-based results are further processed in an object-based majority analysis to detect the final shadow objects. Four different high resolution satellite images are used to validate this new approach. The result shows the superiority of the proposed method over some state-of-the-art shadow detection method with an average of 96% in F-measure.     

CBERS-1卫星IRMSS数据在城市绿地系统规划的应用

文章以CBERS -1卫星长沙幅IRMSS数据作为基础资料 ,利用PCI遥感图像处理软件对数据进行了预处理和应用实验。实验证明CBERS -1卫星的IRMSS数据图像信息丰富 ,可解译程度较高 ,能满足大中城市中等比例尺城市绿地系统规划遥感调查的要求     

CBERS-1卫星红外多光谱扫描仪扫描子系统

文章介绍了CBERS -1卫星红外多光谱扫描仪(IRMSS)关键部件扫描子系统研制与应用情况。