Data assimilative atmospheric density estimation based on GPS data from a nanosatellite

Abstract

Very low Earth orbit (100-400 km altitude) is a region where satellite missions are expected to become more active in the future. However, because of the difficulty of observations in this region, the atmospheric density, which is critical for satellite missions, has not been fully clarified. In 2017, from flight demonstration mission by the deployable nanosatellite EGG, intermittent GPS data in this region was obtained. This data was used to estimate atmospheric density using a data assimilation based on a distributed-parallel swarm optimization technique.