Coverage characteristics of hurricane monitoring CubeSat constellations under orbital perturbations

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Authors
Chadalavada, Pardhasai
Dutta, Atri
Advisors
Issue Date
2022-01-03
Type
Conference paper
Keywords
Constellations , Geostationary operational environmental satellite , Atmospheric drag , Onboard sensors , Weather forecasting , Numerical simulation , Earth , General mission analysis tool , Remote sensing and applications , Argument of latitude
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Chadalavada, P., &; Dutta, A. (2022, January 3). Coverage Characteristics of Hurricane Monitoring CubeSat Constellations under Orbital Perturbations. Aerospace Research Central. Retrieved April 29, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-2377
Abstract

Miniaturized precipitation radars deployed on CubeSats have the potential to significantly improve hurricane forecasting by collecting measurements over data-starved regions and by complementing the existing sensor infrastructure in other places. The use of narrow-swath sensors typically lead to the deployment of hundreds of CubeSats in a constellation to meet the spatial and temporal needs needs of state-of-the-art weather forecasting systems. To this end, this paper investigates the effect of orbital perturbations on the performance of such a constellation measured by the coverage it provides over a designated geographical area. In addition, we determine the station-keeping requirements of constituent CubeSats in order to counteract the effect of fourth-order geopotential perturbations and atmospheric drag. Using numerical simulations, we have quantified the effects for a 240 satellite constellation observing the mainland United States and the Atlantic basin.

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Publisher
AIAA
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AIAA SCITECH 2022 Forum;2022
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