TY - JOUR
T1 - Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejection effects on thermospheric density as inferred from International Space Station orbital data
AU - Mendaza, T.
AU - Blanco-Ávalos, J. J.
AU - Martín-Torres, J.
N1 - We acknowledge Michael Lodge-Paolini for providing the high resolution ephemerids of the ISS. The TLEs were obtained from Dr. T.S. Kelso, who is in charge of the public website http://celestrak.com/NORAD/archives/request. asp. We would like to thank NASA OMNIWEB for providing the magnetic field data required for the execution of this work.
CME catalog is generated and maintained at the CDAW Data Center by NASA and The Catholic University of America in cooperation with the Naval Research Laboratory. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.
We acknowledge Oulu’s neutron monitor for supplying the neutron count data, NMBD for providing a web interface for downloading the neutron data, and Kyoto University and (http://www.nwra.com/spawx/) for the geomagnetic indexes.
TM has been partially funded by the Graduate School of Space Technology of the Lulea˚ Tekniska Universitet, and JJBA has been funded by the CTM2016-77325-C2-1-P project.
PY - 2017/11/15
Y1 - 2017/11/15
N2 - The solar activity induces long term and short term periodical variations in the dynamics and composition of Earth's atmosphere. The Sun also shows non periodical (i.e., impulsive) activity that reaches the planets orbiting around it. In particular, Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections (ICMEs) reach Earth and interact with its magnetosphere and upper neutral atmosphere. Nevertheless, the interaction with the upper atmosphere is not well characterized because of the absence of regular and dedicated in situ measurements at high altitudes; thus, current descriptions of the thermosphere are based on semi empirical models. In this paper, we present the total neutral mass densities of the thermosphere retrieved from the orbital data of the International Space Station (ISS) using the General Perturbation Method, and we applied these densities to routinely compiled trajectories of the ISS in low Earth orbit (LEO). These data are explicitly independent of any atmospheric model. Our density values are consistent with atmospheric models, which demonstrates that our method is reliable for the inference of thermospheric density. We have inferred the thermospheric total neutral density response to impulsive solar activity forcing from 2001 to the end of 2006 and determined how solar events affect this response. Our results reveal that the ISS orbital parameters can be used to infer the thermospheric density and analyze solar effects on the thermosphere.
AB - The solar activity induces long term and short term periodical variations in the dynamics and composition of Earth's atmosphere. The Sun also shows non periodical (i.e., impulsive) activity that reaches the planets orbiting around it. In particular, Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections (ICMEs) reach Earth and interact with its magnetosphere and upper neutral atmosphere. Nevertheless, the interaction with the upper atmosphere is not well characterized because of the absence of regular and dedicated in situ measurements at high altitudes; thus, current descriptions of the thermosphere are based on semi empirical models. In this paper, we present the total neutral mass densities of the thermosphere retrieved from the orbital data of the International Space Station (ISS) using the General Perturbation Method, and we applied these densities to routinely compiled trajectories of the ISS in low Earth orbit (LEO). These data are explicitly independent of any atmospheric model. Our density values are consistent with atmospheric models, which demonstrates that our method is reliable for the inference of thermospheric density. We have inferred the thermospheric total neutral density response to impulsive solar activity forcing from 2001 to the end of 2006 and determined how solar events affect this response. Our results reveal that the ISS orbital parameters can be used to infer the thermospheric density and analyze solar effects on the thermosphere.
KW - Thermosphere total neutral density
KW - ISS drag coefficient
KW - Sun-Earth interaction
KW - Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections
U2 - 10.1016/j.asr.2017.08.016
DO - 10.1016/j.asr.2017.08.016
M3 - Article
VL - 60
SP - 2233
EP - 2251
JO - Advances in Space Research
JF - Advances in Space Research
SN - 0273-1177
IS - 10
ER -