SA21A-01
C/NOFS Thermospheric Research and Reentry Experiment (T-RREX)
Tuesday, 15 December 2015: 08:00
2016 (Moscone West)
Cassandra G Fesen, Kirtland Air Force Base, Kirtland AFB, NM, United States, Louise C Gentile, Air Force Research Laboratory, Kirtland AFB, NM, United States and C/NOFS Science Team
Abstract:
The Air Force Research Laboratory leveraged a unique opportunity with the Communication/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS) satellite to collect a comprehensive set of low-altitude measurements as the orbit decayed. C/NOFS flew in a 13-degree elliptical orbit for more than seven years from 2008 to 2015. The data collected during this final phase of the C/NOFS mission will advance our understanding of topside/bottomside dynamics and improve models currently used for trajectory propagation, orbital drag and uncontrolled reentry predictions.
