Initial Operation and Preliminary Results of the Instrument for the Study of Stable/Storm-Time Space (ISSS) on Board the Next Generation Small Satellite-1 (NEXTSat-1)

Abstract

This paper describes the initial operations and preliminary results of the Instrument for the study of Stable/Storm-time Space (ISSS) onboard the microsatellite Next Generation Small Satellite-1 (NEXTSat-1), which was launched on December 4, 2018 into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 575 km with an orbital inclination angle of 97.7°. The spacecraft and the instruments have been working normally, and the results from the observations are in agreement with those from other satellites. Nevertheless, improvement in both the spacecraft/instrument operation and the analysis is suggested to produce more fruitful scientific results from the satellite operations. It is expected that the ISSS observations will become the main mission of the NEXTSat-1 at the end of 2020, when the technological experiments and astronomical observations terminate after two years of operation.

Keywords

• space storm
• instrument for the study of stable/storm-time space (isss)
• high-energy particle detector (hepd)
• medium- energy particle detector (mepd)