Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Dec 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufm.p54b..03m&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #P54B-03
Mathematics
Logic
[5400] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets, [5700] Planetary Sciences: Fluid Planets, [6000] Planetary Sciences: Comets And Small Bodies, [6200] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects
Scientific paper
Future active radio observations of planetary and satellite atmospheres and surfaces could significantly benefit form the presence of two or more spacecraft in orbit around a target object. Traditionally, radio occultation and bistatic surface scattering experiments have been conducted using a single spacecraft operating in the Downlink (DL) configuration, with the spacecraft transmitting and at least one Earth-based station receiving. The configuration has the advantage of using powerful ground-based receivers for down-conversion, digitization, and digital recording of large bandwidth data for later off-line processing and analysis. It has the disadvantage of an available free-space signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) limited by the relatively small carrier power (10-20 W) a spacecraft can practically transmit. Recent technological advances in designing small-mass and small-power spacecraft-based digital receivers capable of on-board signal processing could open the door for significant performance improvement compared with the DL configuration. For example, with two spacecraft in orbit instead of one, the smaller distance D between the two spacecraft compared with the distance to Earth can boost achievable free-space SNR by one to three orders of magnitude, depending on D. In addition, richer variability in observation geometry can be captured using spacecraft-to-spacecraft (SC-to-SC) radio occultations and surface scattering. By their nature, traditional DL occultations are confined to the morning and evening terminators. Availability of on-board processing capability also opens the door for conducting Uplink (UL) occultation and bistatic observations, where very large power (> 20 kW) can be transmitted from an Earth-based station, potentially boasting achievable free-space SNR by orders of magnitude, comparable to the SC-to-SC case and much higher than the DL case. The Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM) will likely be the first planetary mission to benefit from the unprecedented opportunity of having two highly capable spacecraft orbiting Jupiter in concert and during the same time window. The strawman payload of the American Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO) and the European Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter (JGO) envisions at least one spacecraft (JGO) hosting an on-board digital receiving and processing capability. The receiver is specifically designed to allow for synergistic SC-to-SC observations, as well as Earth-to-JGO UL observations. In principle, each spacecraft can host an on-board digital receiver for rich combinations of high-performance synergistic or individual observations, depending on the opportunity. For the envisioned EJSM strawman payload and example tour, we examine achievable performance for potential observations that include SC-to-SC, UL, and DL occultations of Jupiter’s ionosphere and neutral atmosphere, the ionospheres and thin atmospheres of the large Jovian satellites, and of the tenuous Jovian Rings. We also consider potential bistatic scattering (bistatic-radar) observation opportunities of the surfaces of Europa and Ganymede.
Asmar Sami W.
Folkner William M.
Hinson David
Iess Luciano
Linscott Ivan R.
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