2013 Radiation Belts Workshop: Comprehending, Specifying and Forecasting their Dynamics

An evaluation of the AP9/AE9 radiation belt models for application in an ESA context

1 Jul 2013, 10:30

30m

Island of Santorini, Greece (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini)

Oral AP-9, AE-9 International Collaboration AP-9/AE-9 Business Meeting

Speaker

Dr Daniel Heynderickx (DH Consultancy BVBA)

Description

Since the beginning of the space age, considerable effort was invested in building models of the trapped proton and electron populations, culminating in the NASA AP-8 and AE-8 models which have been the de facto standards since the seventies. In the intervening years, there have been several new models created, but none with the coverage in energy or space provided by these original models. The recently released new version of these models (preliminary called AP9/AE9) features significantly improved capabilities and includes a significantly greater quantity of data. The first usage of the AP9/AE9 model in radiation analysis applications has revealed significant differences with results obtained with older radiation belt models for some orbit types. Consequently, an ESA sponsored activity was started to validate the new model results against other radiation belt models and in situ datasets. In addition, the optimal implementation of the new models in existing ESA software packages and tools was investigated. The conclusions of the validation activity will lead to recommendations for updates to the ECSS-E-ST-10-04 space environment standard.