Last week, the Leonid Space team had the honor of speaking at the annual Space Weather Workshop in Boulder, CO at the invitation of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). We used this opportunity to share a spacecraft operator’s perspective with our friends and colleagues in the space weather community, discussing the importance of solar cycle prediction for spacecraft design.
The Importance of Solar Cycle Prediction for Spacecraft Design
Getting the solar cycle right is necessary for meeting spacecraft lifetime and space safety goals. Solar flux drives atmospheric density and drag in LEO, which determines the sizing for the propulsion and momentum systems on a spacecraft. Without the right propulsion system, a spacecraft can deorbit years before its intended lifetime. And without the hardware to dump enough momentum in stressing environments, a spacecraft will be unable to perform safety-critical collision avoidance maneuvers throughout its entire mission envelope.
We highlighted Capella Space’s lifetime issues during their “Battle with the Sun” as a case study for what can happen when solar cycle predictions go awry. You can find our presentation slides here.
Connecting the Space Weather Community and Spacecraft Operators
Spacecraft design engineers need to know the worst case space weather environments to ensure their spacecraft can survive the mission, 15+ years ahead of time. After launch, operators need to know the range of possible environments over the next months to years to know how long their spacecraft in orbit will survive. In contrast, the space weather community is primarily focused on understanding underlying solar physics and generating near-term forecasts of how Earth’s atmospheric and geomagnetic environment is affected by current solar conditions.
This gap means that solar cycle predictions are not aligned with the needs of spacecraft operators. Previous predictions do not bound the current environment, and past analyses may be fatally flawed.
Leonid Space was founded to provide spacecraft operators with the tools they need to protect their missions in the face of turbulent space weather. We want to bridge this gap.
Reception and Coverage
We were excited to see this message resonate with the space weather community, with researchers from across the field enthusiastically offering their help. And we were happily surprised to see SpaceNews feature our talk and Leonid’s launch in its article covering the workshop.
Urgent Need
With billions in space assets at stake, we cannot afford to rely on outdated solar cycle predictions. The need for action is immediate - spacecraft operators require better tools now to ensure their satellites can weather the storm.
Contact us to get a real-time Deorbit Report or help with spacecraft and mission design.