Feasibility Study for an Atmospheric Density Specification Satellite

📖 The Scoop

The purpose of the Atmospheric Density Specification (ADS) mission (AFGL-705) is to generate a coordinated and comprehensive global set of lower thermospheric state variables (density, temperature, and wind) in the altitude range 100 - 300 kilometers. This data set will be analyzed by a team of scientists including experimentalists and theoreticians to improve the performance of the density specification models of this region of the atmosphere, which currently provide density predictions to a typical accuracy of approx. 15 percent. The instrument complement of the proposed mission includes an ion/neutral mass spectrometer capable of determining absolute neutral densities to approx. 5 percent, an electrostatic triaxial accelerometer for satellite drag and cross-track wind determination, a Fabry-Perot interferometer for the determination of altitude profiles of vector winds, temperatures and composition, and an ion mass spectrometer capable of determining neutral winds and ion neutral constituent abundances.

Genre: No Category (fancy, right?)