The Satellite Risk Prediction and Radiation Forecast System (SaRIF)

Abstract

On 7 April 2019 Intelsat 29e, a communications satellite at geostationary orbit, experienced an anomaly resulting in a fuel leak. Two days later communication with the satellite was lost, and as revealed by ground based optical telescopes, a number of pieces of debris were seen emanating from the satellite in the days that followed (https:// www.spaceflightnow.com/2019/04/15/stricken-with-fuel-leak-intelsat-29e-seen-drifting-in-geostationary-orbit/). ExoAnalytic's observations are available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqPrVn71IqY). On 10 April Intelsat issued a Press Release reporting a service outage which affected maritime, aeronautical and wireless operator customers in the Latin America, Caribbean and North Atlantic regions. They also described their efforts to migrate customers to other satellites (https://www.intelsat.com/news/press-release/intelsat-29e-service-outage/). On 18 April Intelsat declared the satellite a total loss. The satellite now appears to be tumbling out of control and drifting toward the East around the geostationary arc.

Space Plasma Physics: A Review

“…Chorus waves are now used in global models to forecast Earth's electron radiation belts for space weather applications. They have moved from a challenging theoretical problem to an important practical application, namely, to help protect satellites in orbit from harmful electron radiation [326], [327].…”

Unraveling the Critical Geomagnetic Conditions Controlling the Upper Limit of Electron Fluxes in the Earth's Outer Radiation Belt

“…Since the discovery of the Earth's radiation belts in 1958, numerous efforts have been dedicated to understand and forecast the radiation belt electron dynamics (Li & Hudson, 2019; Ripoll et al., 2020, and references therein), which can manifest various loss and acceleration processes with fluxes varying by several orders of magnitude on timescales of days or hours, especially during geomagnetically active times (Baker et al., 2004, 2019; Ma et al., 2020; Reeves et al., 2016; Turner et al., 2019). These outer belt energetic electrons, also known as “killer” electrons (Baker, 2001; Baker et al., 1998), pose a huge hazard to Earth‐orbiting satellites as well as to our unprecedented space‐based connection‐dependent society (Horne et al., 2013, 2021). Therefore, it is of great significance to understand the fundamental geomagnetic conditions that control the upper limit of outer belt electron fluxes, which is also critically important for understanding what physical mechanism dominantly controls and organizes outer belt electron dynamics.…”

Ensemble Modeling of Radiation Belt Electron Flux Decay Following a Geomagnetic Storm: Dependence on Key Input Parameters

“…Owing to the continuous accumulation of high-quality wave and particle measurements from multiple satellite missions and the development of the state-of-art modeling, rapid progress has been made in radiation belt electron forecasting using frontier methods, such as data assimilation, machine learning, and ensemble technique, in the past few decades (e.g., Camporeale, 2019;Camporeale et al, 2018Camporeale et al, , 2016Castillo Tibocha et al, 2021;Cervantes et al, 2020;Kellerman, 2018;Kellerman et al, 2014Kellerman et al, , 2013Morley et al, 2016;Myagkova et al, 2020;Saikin et al, 2021;Shprits et al, 2013;Smirnov et al, 2020). It is essential to understand how the errors in the model output can be apportioned to the uncertainties in the model input to enhance the model and forecast accuracy (e.g., Horne et al, 2021;Knipp et al, 2018;Morley, 2020). The current study investigates the impact on radiation belt simulations of uncertainties of an event-based wave and plasma models relying on measurements from Van Allen Probes within a limited spatiotemporal coverage during ∼6 days.…”