THE CANADIAN ENHANCED POLAR OUTFLOW PROBE ON THE CANADIAN CASSIOPE SMALLSAT

摘要

The CASSIOPE mission is a multi-purpose Canadian Small Satellite mission scheduled for launch in 2007. The CASSIOPE spacecraft will carry the Enhanced Polar Outflow Probe (e-POP) scientific payload and the CASCADE communications technology demonstration payload, and will be placed in an elliptical orbit (325 km x 1500 km, 80° inclination). The e-POP payload will be Canada's first mission contribution to the International Living with a Star (ILWS) initiative. Its scientific objective is to investigate atmospheric and plasma flows and related wave-particle interaction and radio wave propagation in the topside ionosphere. It will carry a suite of 8 scientific instruments, including imaging charged- and neutral-particle sensors, magnetometers, dual-frequency GPS receivers, CCD cameras, a radio wave receiver and a beacon transmitter. It will make particle, wave, and field observations at the highest possible and in some cases unprecedented temporal-spatial resolutions. It will utilize the advanced data storage and telemetry downlink capability of the companion CASCADE payload, which will have Ka-band uplink and downlink and terabit onboard data storage capacity, and will support e-POP science data downlink at a rate of at least 320 Mbit/s and an estimated data volume of up to 15 Gigabytes/day.