A Sensor Package for Space Weather Global Monitoring Based on Micro Satellite Constellation

抄録

Disturbances in space environment around the Earth (Geospace disturbances), which are driven by the solar activities, are causes of spacecraft anomalies, radiation hazards of astronauts and aircrews on polar route, problem of navigations and HF communications, and induction current in long-line power cables. To mitigate the risk of geospace disturbances, improvement of operational space weather forecast with high precision based on numerical forecast scheme would be important. However, the poor observation points in geospace prevent us to introduce numerical forecast scheme with data assimilation technique which was common in terrestrial weather forecast. To breakthrough this situation, we are planning to develop a space environment sensor package, which can contribute to safety operation of the micro satellite itself, and to realize low-cost global monitoring of space environment based on constellation of micro satellites. Space weather observations by several tens of micro satellite constellation enables us to narrow down the sensor performance of single satellite. The optimization strategy of sensor performance for further miniaturization and power saving can accelerate mountability of the package. Based on this approach, it is expected that numerical forecast scheme with data assimilation technique will be introduced for operational space weather forecast in the future.