88th Annual Meeting (20-24 January 2008)

Monday, 21 January 2008: 4:15 PM
Mitigating aviation communication and satellite orbit operations surprises from adverse space weather
221 (Ernest N. Morial Convention Center)
W. Kent Tobiska, Utah State Univ., Logan, UT
Poster PDF (419.4 kB)
Precision satellite orbit determination, constellation station-keeping, debris avoidance, reentry timing, satellite subsystem performance and safety, and communication link enhancement are among the major technological activities that are affected by space weather. We report on progress towards providing applications and services that mitigate adverse effects caused by space weather. In particular, Space Environment Technologies (SET) has developed a) new solar indices that reduce 1-sigma uncertainty by 50% in atmosphere density calculations, b) new spacecraft surface charging characterizations, and c) new solar irradiances that capture solar flare effects on transionospheric communications. These solar products have been developed and tested: 1) daily time resolution for historical, nowcast, and intermediate-term forecast periods (1-day granularity, 1-hour cadence, and 1-hour latency extending 4.5 months); 2) high time reso-lution for recent, nowcast, and short-term forecast periods (3-hour granularity, 1-hour cadence, and 1-hour latency extending 96 hours); and 3) precision time resolution for recent, current epoch, and near-term forecast periods (1-minute granularity, 2-minute cadence, and 5-minute latency extending 6 hours). These indices and solar irradiances are used for improving atmosphere density and ionosphere models' outputs and we describe specific case studies as well as coupled applications that serve space systems users in orbit planning, satellite operations, and communication activities.

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