March 16, 2018, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
March 16, 2018, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm, Heliophysics Director's Seminar, Hosted by the Space Weather Laboratory (674)
Dellingr Status Update
Larry Kepko (NASA/GSFC)
Dellingr, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's (GSFC) first 6U CubeSat, was deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) on November 20, 2017. The Dellingr team was intentionally given limited resources and a tight schedule to accomplish the mission. The goal was to 'stress the system' and apply and appropriately tailor GSFC knowledge and capability to design and build a CubeSat that increases resiliency and capability, while keeping costs down. The Dellingr spacecraft is a mixture of COTS and in-house components, and includes two science instruments - an advanced gated time-of-flight ion-neutral mass spectrometer (INMS) and a boom mounted fluxgate (in addition to 2 internal magnetometers). While a traditional GSFC spacecraft approach includes detailed analysis, design, testing, and extensive reviews, the Dellingr team adopted a 'build, test, fix' approach to identify and correct potential mission ending issues. Yet, despite extensive testing, Dellingr immediately experienced unexpected major anomalies once on orbit. These anomalies increased in severity through early February, 2018, and included issues with the GPS, IMU, fine sun sensor, and errors on the I2C bus that threatened to cripple the mission. Just when we had thought the mission was over, we managed to initiate a backdoor reset of the system, recover the spacecraft, and turn on the INMS instrument. From the 'learning from flying' perspective, Dellingr is a major success. The extensive set of lessons-learned is driving changes to our Small Satellite systems architecture, flight software, and testing approaches, and has provided valuable insight into what is required to produce a NASA SmallSat science mission with a moderate assurance of mission success, while containing resource requirements. It also provides valuable ground-truth for future Decadal Survey missions that may involve SmallSat architectures. In the talk I will summarize Dellingr's on-orbit performance, and highlight key lessons learned.
INMS: Tiny mass spec for data-hungry scientists
Sarah Jones (NASA/GSFC)
The GSFC Heliophysics Science Division has developed a tiny, versatile Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) for a wide variety of science applications on CubeSat and large satellite platforms. In particular, there is a great need for in situ measurements of atmospheric ion and neutral composition and density due to a dearth of measurements since the DE satellite mission ~30 years ago. INMS seeks to fill this void while achieving several measurements firsts and enabling new scientific studies, including constellation missions. INMS was recently deployed from the International Space Station as part of GSFC's Dellingr CubeSat mission. This presentation includes an introduction to the instrument technology and preliminary atmospheric composition data from the Dellingr INMS.
Quantifying Auroral Energy Input to Earth's Atmosphere
Robert Robinson (The Catholic University of America)
The precipitating electrons and protons that produce the aurora also deposit energy into Earth's atmosphere above 80 km altitude. In addition to producing optical emissions, this energy heats the thermosphere and ionizes atmospheric constituents, enhancing the ambient electron density. For space weather applications, quantifying the energy flux is important for accurate modeling of perturbations to satellite orbits due to atmospheric drag. Also, enhanced electron densities from auroral precipitation cause changes in the electrical conductivity of the ionosphere, resulting in dynamic variations of magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling and high latitude current systems. For these applications, specification of the global auroral energy input is essential.
Here we describe the results of studies of auroral energy flux and high latitude conductivities based on data from the Global Ultraviolet Imager (GUVI) on the Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) satellite, the Poker Flat Incoherent Scatter Radar (PFISR), and the Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment (AMPERE). The results show that the measurements of field-aligned currents provided by AMPERE can be used to determine energy flux and other high latitude electrodynamic properties globally and continuously.
