Conceptual Design of a Solid State Telescope for Small scale magNetospheric Ionospheric Plasma Experiments

Abstract

The present paper describes the design of a Solid State Telescope (SST) on board the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute satellite-1 (KASISat-1) consisting of four [TBD] nanosatellites. The SST will measure these radiation belt electrons from a low-Earth polar orbit satellite to study mechanisms related to the spatial resolution of electron precipitation, such as electron microbursts, and those related to the measurement of energy dispersion with a high temporal resolution in the sub-auroral regions. We performed a simulation to determine the sensor design of the SST using GEometry ANd Tracking 4 (GEANT4) simulations and the Bethe formula. The simulation was performed in the range of 100 ~ 400 keV considering that the electron, which is to be detected in the space environment. The SST is based on a silicon barrier detector and consists of two telescopes mounted on a satellite to observe the electrons moving along the geomagnetic field (pitch angle 0°) and the quasi-trapped electrons (pitch angle 90°) during observations. We determined the telescope design of the SST in view of previous measurements and the geometrical factor in the cylindrical geometry of Sullivan (1971). With a high spectral resolution of 16 channels over the 100 keV ~ 400 keV energy range, together with the pitch angle information, the designed SST will answer questions regarding the occurrence of microbursts and the interaction with energetic particles. The KASISat-1 is expected to be launched in the latter half of 2020.

Feasibility Study of Communication Access via Iridium Constellation for Small-Scale Magnetospheric Ionospheric Plasma Experiment Mission

“…SNIPE is a mission to observe the space environment with the formation flying of four KASISat-1 on a Sunsynchronous polar orbit at an altitude of 500-600 km. Each KASISat-1 had three scientific instruments: the LP measuring the density of cold ionospheric electrons (Song et al 2022), the Solid-State Telescope measuring energetic electron flux (Sohn et al 2018), and the 3-axis fluxgate MAG measuring magnetic field vectors (Song et al 2021a). In particular, IGB communicating with Iridium satellites was mounted for technical demonstration.…”

“…Scientific payloads of KASISat-1 are Solid State Telescope, Magnetometer (MAG), and Langmuir Probe (LP). In addition, Gamma Ray burst Monitor (GRM) and Iridium & GPS Board (IGB) are on-board as sub-payloads (Sohn et al 2018). In particular, IGB is equipped to demonstrate an inter-satellite communication system by transmitting data to the ground via an iridium satellite (Cho et al 2022).…”

Magnetometer Calibration Based on the CHAOS-7 Model

“…All the processes are performed using Python 3.8.5, NumPy 1.19.2, SciPy 1.6, AstroPy 4.2, SpacePy 0.2.1, and ChaosmagPy 0.5 including the CHAOS-7.6 geomagnetic field model. In the future, this code will be used for in-orbit calibration of the magnetic field data from the NEXT generation small Satellite-1 (NEXTSat-1) operated by the Satellite Technology Research Center (SaTReC) of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) (Kim et al 2020), and from the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute Satellite (KASISat) of the Small scale magNetospheric and Ionospheric Plasma Experiment (SNIPE) mission under development at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) (Sohn et al 2018;Kang et al 2020).…”