Orbit design for future SpaceChip swarm missions in a planetary atmosphere
Orbit design for future SpaceChip swarm missions in a planetary atmosphere
The effect of solar radiation pressure and atmospheric drag on the orbital dynamics of satellites-on-a-chip (SpaceChips) is exploited to design equatorial long-lived orbits about the oblate Earth. The orbit energy gain due to asymmetric solar radiation pressure, considering the Earth's shadow, is used to balance the energy loss due to atmospheric drag. Future missions for a swarm of SpaceChips are proposed, where a number of small devices are released from a conventional spacecraft to perform spatially distributed measurements of the conditions in the ionosphere and exosphere. It is shown that the orbit lifetime can be extended and indeed selected through solar radiation pressure and the end-of-life re-entry of the swarm can be ensured, by exploiting atmospheric drag
25-41
Colombo, Camilla
595ced96-9494-40f2-9763-ad4a0f96bc86
McInnes, Colin
58a93321-a76d-42f9-9c2f-bfb659124b78
June 2012
Colombo, Camilla
595ced96-9494-40f2-9763-ad4a0f96bc86
McInnes, Colin
58a93321-a76d-42f9-9c2f-bfb659124b78
Colombo, Camilla and McInnes, Colin
(2012)
Orbit design for future SpaceChip swarm missions in a planetary atmosphere.
Acta Astronautica, 75, .
(doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2012.01.004).
Abstract
The effect of solar radiation pressure and atmospheric drag on the orbital dynamics of satellites-on-a-chip (SpaceChips) is exploited to design equatorial long-lived orbits about the oblate Earth. The orbit energy gain due to asymmetric solar radiation pressure, considering the Earth's shadow, is used to balance the energy loss due to atmospheric drag. Future missions for a swarm of SpaceChips are proposed, where a number of small devices are released from a conventional spacecraft to perform spatially distributed measurements of the conditions in the ionosphere and exosphere. It is shown that the orbit lifetime can be extended and indeed selected through solar radiation pressure and the end-of-life re-entry of the swarm can be ensured, by exploiting atmospheric drag
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e-pub ahead of print date: 18 February 2012
Published date: June 2012
Organisations:
Astronautics Group
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Local EPrints ID: 341076
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/341076
ISSN: 0094-5765
PURE UUID: 8084321e-a958-4a11-8745-c33607a55456
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Date deposited: 13 Jul 2012 08:17
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 11:34
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Author:
Camilla Colombo
Author:
Colin McInnes
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