Further evidence of the long-term thermospheric density variation using 1U CubeSats

Abstract

Faculty members, undergraduate and graduate students of the School of Communication and Aerospace Engineering (Polytechnical University of Catalonia) are participating in a series of studies to determine the thermospheric density. These studies involve planning a space mission, designing and constructing small satellites, and performing related data analysis. This article presents a method for determining the thermospheric density and summarises the academic context in which we develop our work. Several studies have reported the existence of a downtrend in thermospheric density, with relative values ranging from –2% to –7% per decade. Although it is well known that solar and geomagnetic activity are the main drivers of the variations of the thermospheric density, this downtrend was reported to be caused by the rise of greenhouse gases. We present an update of this progression, considering the last solar cycle (2009-2021) and using Two-Line Elements sets (TLE) of 1U CubeSats and the spherical satellites ANDE-2. TLEs were used to propagate the orbits numerically using SGP4 (Simplified General Perturbations), and then compute the average density between two consecutive TLEs by integrating the appropriate differential equation. Then, using the NRLMSISE-00 (Picone 2002) and JB2008 (Bowman 2008) atmospheric models, we calculated an average density deviation per year. We built a comprehensive time series of the thermospheric density values, ranging from 1967 to the present. We merged Emmert (2015) thermospheric density data and our results computed both with NRLMSISE-00 and with JB2008. A linear regression on the combined dataset yields a decreasing trend of –5.1% per decade. We also studied the geomagnetic and solar activity to isolate the possible greenhouse gasses effect during the considered period. Our results show a strong correlation between geomagnetic activity and density deviation near the solar minima, and we propose that the cause of the previously reported long-term density deviation could be a poor adjustment of the effects of geomagnetic activity. Finally, we proved that orbital information from small satellites could be efficiently used to assess the evolution of thermospheric density variations. Additional data obtained from future missions (as the one proposed by our group) will eventually allow a better characterisation of the atmospheric density and help disentangle the possible greenhouse gasses effects on its variations