Speaker
Dr
Insoo Jun
(NASA/JPL)
Description
Space is not empty. Although it is near vacuum, it actually contains copious amounts of different environmental species that may affect the design and operation of spacecraft. It is customary to describe the space environment in terms of 4 physical components: neutrals, plasma (low energy charged particles with <~10 keV), high-energy radiation (e.g., charged particles with > ~10 keV), and particulate environments (micrometeoroid and orbital debris or MMOD). The space environment is also dynamic and often unpredictable, and its interaction with spacecraft is complex. If not properly designed against the anticipated space environment condition, mission success could be compromised, sometimes in a grand scale (i.e., total mission failure). In fact, there are many anomalies and failures of space missions due to space environmental effects. Often, however, it has been very difficult (sometimes almost impossible) to find the root-cause of those anomalies and failures because of the lack of in-situ environmental data from the affected spacecraft – making it necessary to spend a lot of effort (in terms of time and resources) to analyze the failures. Here, we describe a space environmental monitoring program that is being proposed for future JPL’s Earth and planetary science missions, which will be flexible in design and will utilize technologically ready sensors and supporting electronics in a cubesat form factor. The data would provide invaluable information for potential anomaly/failure investigation and also used as the source for improving/updating the existing environment models.
Primary author
Dr
Insoo Jun
(NASA/JPL)
Co-author
Dr
Wousik Kim
(JPL, NASA)
