In this paper, we examine the drag effect of the Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite-1(KOMPSAT-1) during extreme solar and geomagnetic activity. It is well known that there exists serious satellite drag when the space environment is suddenly changed during ...
In this paper, we examine the drag effect of the Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite-1(KOMPSAT-1) during extreme solar and geomagnetic activity. It is well known that there exists serious satellite drag when the space environment is suddenly changed during extreme solar and geomagnetic activity caused by big flares and/or fast halo coronal mass ejections(CMEs). According to Cho et al.(2004), the KOMPSAT-1, as a Low-Earth Orbit(LEO) satellite, experienced serious errors in its 3-days orbit prediction due to extreme solar and geomagentic activity in October and November, 2003. There are two major mechanisms to induce satellite drags: the heating by solar EUV radiation (characterized by F10.7), and the heating by joule heating via particle precipitation during geomagnetic storms (characterized by Dst and Polar Cap index). In order to examine these effects, we select five events dominated by the radiation effect and/or the particle effect. In addition, we compared the density from drag acceleration equation with that based on the MSISE-90 empirical atmospheric model. The major results can be summarized as follows. (1) The satellite drag, represented by drag acceleration, started simultaneously with the increase of solar EUV radiation such as solar flares and then has the best correlation with the 1 day delayed F10.7. (2) The variations of drag and Dst index have similar patterns when geomagnetic storms are dominant. (3) The comparison of two derived densities (drag data and model) shows that the empirical atmospheric density model such as MSISE-90 does not well account for the density variation during the extreme activity, as considered in this study.