It is well known that diffraction of radio phase fronts produces amplitude and phase fluctuations even at GHz frequencies used for satellite communication and navigation systems. These scintillations are caused by naturally occurring ionospheric plasma density irregularities at scales from hundreds of meters to a few kilometres, that are generally most severe at high and low latitudes, the...
Thales Alenia Space has been developing Radiation Monitors since more than 20 years with many units in orbit and operational.
Constantly driving forward the miniaturization, TAS has embarked to develop the miniRMU, a smaller, more compact Radiation Monitor based on the successful NRGM design. However the miniRMU is only one possible evolution of the NGRM design for D3S. The presentation...
In the framework of SSA/SWE phase 3 two ICARE-NG radiation monitoring payloads will be delivered. This instrument was first developed in the late 90’s and the latest flight model produced will be launched by the mid-2019 on the EUTELSAT’s satellite E7C, an EOR+GEO mission. It is based on ICARE-NG generic system where 5 acquisition chains are implemented. The output of the spectrum acquisition...
Science class space radiation spectrometers are embarked on satellites to collect data for various objectives including validation / improvement / development of radiation environment models, characterization of the dynamics of the space radiation environment as well as provide space weather services.
The EPT is actually flying on-board PROBA-V as technology demonstration payload. The...
Space weather is defined by the conditions on the Sun, the interplanetary space and Earths atmosphere. A change in the conditions of any of these elements may impact the performance of space- and ground based technology and can even affect human life in space and on Earth. One aspect of space weather are solar transient phenomena like coronal mass ejections and solar flares. These phenomena...
Radiation-Hard Electron Monitor (RADEM) is an instrument developed for ESA JUICE mission. It consists of four detector subsystems: Electron Stack Detector (ESD), Proton Stack Detector (PSD), Heavy Ion Stack Detector (HISD) and Directional Detector (DD). The instrument is designed to provide quasi logarithmic spectra of electrons and protons as well as an angular distribution of electrons. HISD...
The Lagrange mission concept is overseen by the Space Situational Awareness Programme at ESA to ensure an effective capability to monitor potentially dangerous solar events. This mission concept proposes positioning two spacecraft in orbit at the L1 and L5 Lagrangian points, respectively, where gravitational forces interact to create a stable location for observations. The Medium Energy...
University of Turku (UTU) is developing CubeSat compatible instrumentation for observing and monitoring near-Earth particle radiation environment within the framework of Finnish Centre of Excellence in Research of Sustainable Space (FORESAIL). The first instrument of the suite, Radiation Monitor (RADMON), is making observations of energetic electrons (>1.5 MeV) and protons (>10 MeV)...
Based on the multi-anode photomultiplier MAPMT and readout electronic developed for the POLAR instrument on-board of the Chinese Space Lab TG2 we present a concept of the Cosmic Ray LET spectrometer. The instrument is made of scintillator detectors coupled with the MAPMT and POLAR front-end readout-out electronics. It is tuned for detection of energy depositions from the Cosmic Rays covering...
PAN is an innovative energetic particle detection technology to precisely measure and monitor the flux and composition of highly penetrating particles (> ~100 MeV/nucleon) in deep space, which will have broad applications. PAN will fill an observation gap of galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) in the 100 MeV/n - GeV/n region, which will help to improve our understanding of the origin of GCRs and their...
In the frame of the Space Weather Service segment of the SSA (Space Situational Awareness) programme ESA (European Space Agency) requested an operational space weather prediction system with appropriate databases originating from near-real time service provider instruments in order to provide space weather related services. Since the space weather environment of the Earth is highly influenced...
The Service Oriented Spacecraft Magnetometer (SOSMAG) is a TRL-8 instrument that is suitable for use on satellites without magnetic cleanliness programme. Its development was initiated and conducted by the European Space Agency and the instrument was built by the SOSMAG consortium (Magson GmbH, TU Braunschweig, IWF Graz and Imperial College London).
SOSMAG enables detection of the...
The ability to monitor space weather is of key importance in protecting infrastructure from its adverse effects, both in space and on the ground. Moreover, the risks associated with space weather are the subject of growing societal interest, following the realisation that severe space weather can deliver significant socio-economic impact through a variety of mechanisms. Space weather...
The Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) has strong heritage with plasma instrumentation delivering capable instruments for a range of missions including for magnetospheric missions (Cluster, Double Star), planetary environments (Cassini) and cometary studies (Giotto). These activities are backed up with a strong instrument development programme and state of the art test and calibration...
The Sweeping Langmuir Probe (SLP) instrument, which will fly on board the Pico-Satellite for Atmospheric and Space Science Observations (PICASSO), has been developed at the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy. PICASSO, an ESA in-orbit demonstrator which will be launched end of 2019 / beginning of 2020 with Vega, is a triple unit CubeSat of dimensions 340.5x100x100 mm.
SLP is a...
- measuring incoming auroral low energies fluxes and spacecraft absolute voltage -
Electrostatic discharges (ESD) are a major risk of failures in orbit. From temporary outage to power loss with secondary arcing, the panel of possible degradation is very wide. The tribute already paid by the agencies, insurance or operator is certainly very high and expressed in millions euros.
Coming from...
We introduce a new technique of space weather monitoring using energetic neutral atoms (ENAs), and the instrumentation to achieve the monitoring. ENAs are produced ubiquitously in the solar system through charge exchange interactions between space plasma and ambient particles. Thanks to their neutrality, ENAs fly along ballistic trajectories, keeping the energy and direction information of the...
In the field of space weather research, the monitoring of auroral emissions is one of the most powerful tools to obtain the particles precipitation spectra along the auroral oval. The concerned particles are mainly low energy electrons coming from the plasmasheet. Protons can also precipitate. These particles have energy ranges from tens of eV to keV. It represents one of the main energetic...
During the past years, CSL has been involved in many missions aiming at imaging the Sun. Every mission led to the design of specific solutions to support the considered environment and fulfill user requirements. Coming from a very stable thermal solution for Proba2/SWAP to an extremely compact design for the ESIO study, CSL developed a multi channel instrument for Solar Orbiter and is now...
Radio emissions in the MF and HF bands (typically from 0.1 to 30 MHz) provide an important diagnostic of solar activity as radio bursts are generated by energetic electrons in the vicinity of interplanetary shocks that are associated with geoeffective coronal mass ejections. While such electromagnetic emissions are usually detected by means of electric field antennas, their magnetic component...
The Distributed Space Weather Sensor System (D3S) is an excellent initiative and already consists of many sensors and instruments, including neutral and charged particle as well as radiation monitors and magnetometers. However, one type of key instrument is missing: no wave instruments/sensors are planned to be included.
Electromagnetic waves in the ULF-ELF-VLF band play a key role in...
The development of micro-particle detectors has a long history since the early years of the space age. Mostly dedicated to scientific purposes to gain and improve knowledge about the micrometeoroid environment around the Earth and in interplanetary space, their data was used to establish and enhance the respective particle environment models.
Due to the fact that in most cases these...
A CubeSat constellation platform has been found to be a tempting and cost-effective solution for monitoring of space weather at LEO, which would complement higher altitude space weather observations, providing data for validation of space weather models and using assimilation for better spatial and temporal resolution, thus enabling services for operational use in aviation and other user...
The Constellation of High Energy Swiss Satellites CHESS will rely on detector modules made for the hard X-ray polarimeter POLAR flying onboard of the Chinese space laboratory TianGong 2. Spare modules from the polarimeter will be adopted for cube-satellite platform to conduct multidisciplinary research in a constellation of small satellites. It was already demonstrated during POLAR mission...
