Abstract

The present study was directed towards the analysis of the actual environment at the origin of electrostatic charging on satellite surfaces and within dielectric materials and anomalies. The principal objectives of this activity are to improve our current knowledge of the high energy electron environment as it is actually experienced by spacecraft, to check the validity of the existing tools and to prepare for the next generation of tools that would be able to take into account plasma effects for post-event analysis of anomaly events, spacecraft operations and mission analysis. The work is divided in three parts: (i) Analysis of a low Earth polar orbiting spacecraft charging data set, (ii) development of an anomaly risk forecast system and (iii) study and tools development for global geospace modelling and prediction.

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Main outputs and results

• a physical model of the charging process on low Earth polar orbit in the aurora and worst case environment model;
• a database of auroral charging environments and statistical distribution of them;
• a test of the applicability of charging code available at ESTEC for LEO polar environment;
• a forecasting tool of geosynchronous spacecraft anomalies;
• a report on the state of the art of space weather modelling in Europe;
• a URD and SRD for numerical tools for the near earth electron environment modelling;
• a WWW space weather information server on space weather activity and ressources within ESA community and world-wide;

Team

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