VHF Lightning Observations on JEM-GLIMS Mission

—Gradual Approach to Realize Space-borne VHF Broadband Digital Interferometer—

Abstract

Global Lightning and sprIte MeaSurements (GLIMS) mission is scheduled on Exposed Facility of Japanese Experiment Module (JEM-EF) of the International Space Station (ISS). This paper introduced an electromagnetic (EM) payload of JEM-GLIMS mission, very high frequency (VHF) broadband digital InTerFerometer (VITF). VITF consists of a pair of VHF broadband antennas and electronics to record EM waveforms from lightning discharges. It is designed to estimate the direction-of-arrival with about 10 km resolution that is equivalent to the scale of a thundercloud. It means that VITF is able to monitor thunderclouds with lightning activities globally. Comprehensive observations with the optical payloads of JEM-GLIMS mission for lightning activities and related transient luminous events (TLEs) are expected to give us many scientific impacts to the field. The developments of VITF are based on the heritage of VHF sensor on Maido-1 satellite.