Superimposed disturbance in the ionosphere triggered by spacecraft launches in China

Abstract

Abstract. Using GPS dual-frequency observations collected by continuously operating GPS tracking stations in China, superimposed disturbances caused by the integrated action of spacecraft's physical effect and chemical effect on ionosphere during the launches of the spacecrafts Tiangong-1 and Shenzhou-8 in China were firstly determined. The results show that the superimposed disturbance was composed of remarkable ionospheric waves and significant ionospheric depletion emerged after both launches. Meanwhile, we found for the first time that the ionospheric waves were made up of two periods of wave by wavelet analysis. The first period of ∼ 4 min shows one event in the near stations and two subevents in the few far stations. The second period of ∼ 9 min shows only one event in all the observed stations. Finally, the time characteristics for ionospheric waves and depletions were examined.

Ionospheric Disturbances Triggered by China's Long March 2D Rocket

“…The depletion can last for ∼2 h, longer than found in the previous observation results (i.e., 1 h) [9], [24], [25], but more consistent with the observation results of Liu et al [12]. The spacecraft orbit altitude of the former is generally less than 200 km, but the latter is similar to this launch mission (SSO), with an altitude of more than 500 km.…”

Daytime midlatitude plasma depletions observed by Swarm: Topside signatures of the rocket exhaust

“…Ionospheric/thermospheric perturbations including REDs produced by rocket launches have been investigated using ionosonde observations [ Booker , ], measurements of airglow emissions [e.g., Meier et al , ; Mendillo et al , ], and TEC data [ Furuya and Heki , ; Mendillo et al , ; Kakinami et al , ; Lin et al , ; Nakashima and Heki , ; He et al , ]. Those observations represent the phenomena near the F region density peak and at lower altitudes.…”

Study on Four-Dimensional Evolution of Concentric Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances After Falcon 9 Rocket Launch Using Ionospheric Tomography

“…In recent years, with the development of world-wide Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver networks, the ionospheric sounding technology based on muti-frequency observation can accurately acquire ionospheric TEC and reflect the spatial characteristics of the ionosphere by rich ionospheric pierce points (IPPs) [15], [16], [17]. Simultaneously, the increasing number of rocket launch activities provided opportunities for studying the induced ionospheric disturbances [18], [19], [20]. Ding, et al [21] used China's dense GNSS networks to report the ionospheric response to the Shenzhou-10 launch on 11 June 2013, and detected long-range propagating shock waves and acoustic waves.…”