TUTORIAL: THE NEUTRAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE SATELLITE DRAG ENVIRONMENT

摘要

Satellite drag is the primary non-gravitational force acting on satellites below 500 km altitudes and continues to be an important orbital perturbation up to 800-1000 km altitudes. Recent developments in the understanding of upper atmospheric physics as well as the availability of high-resolution satellite drag data are motivating a transition from empirical models to physics based assimilative models as the primary tools for satellite drag specification. The motivation, current progress and future challenges associated with this effort are described in this paper. First principles models, such as TIME-GCM are described and their ability to specify satellite drag is demonstrated. Since the prediction of satellite ballistic coefficients limits the ability to forecast satellite drag almost as much as atmospheric density, physics-based atmospheric models will likely be coupled with physics-based ballistic and drag coefficient specification. This complete approach to the satellite drag problem has the potential to be the first system to achieve the 5% drag specification goal prescribed by the Air Force Space Command