The greatest concentration of spacecraft and space debris resides in an orbital band between 100 and 2000 km altitude, classified as low‐Earth orbit (LEO). Of these space objects, those below about 1000 km all experience an appreciable drag force due to the presence of Earth's atmosphere. It has been a common approach to use LEO spacecraft orbital behavior to extract upper atmosphere properties and then reapply this atmosphere description to predict future spacecraft behavior using orbit propagators. This approach leads to mutual coupling between spacecraft response and atmosphere change that results in convoluted uncertainties. To unravel such interdependencies, a physical description of the LEO space environment and how it changes due to external influences is required independently of the physical description for atmosphere‐spacecraft interactions. The main challenge lies in attributing how much of the orbital perturbation is the result of changes in the upper atmosphere versus changes in a satellite's ballistic coefficient. Today, greater fidelity in space environment specification is required for LEO spacecraft operations, collision avoidance procedures, and space environment forecasting. This chapter highlights the remaining issues by segmenting the LEO drag environment into a lower and upper register, and describing separately the LEO environment and gas‐surface interaction in each register. In addition, advances in solar and geomagnetic drivers for improved density specification are described.
Remaining Issues in Upper Atmosphere Satellite Drag
2021-03-19
30 pages
Aufsatz/Kapitel (Buch)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
The upper atmosphere research satellite
AIAA | 1984
|Descent of earth-satellite through upper atmosphere
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