Investigating the ionosphere response to exhaust products of “Progress” cargo spacecraft engines on the basis of Irkutsk Incoherent Scatter Radar data

Abstract

The FSUE Central Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNIIMash), Rocket and Space Corporation “Energia”, and Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISTP SB RAS) jointly conducted the active space experiment “Radar-Progress” in 2007–2015. During this experiment, the Irkutsk Incoherent Scatter Radar was used to study space-time characteristics of ionospheric disturbances generated by exhaust products of Progress cargo spacecraft engines. As the basic effect during exhaust product injection we consider the formation of new centers for recombination of ambient ionospheric ions O+ on molecules of water and carbon dioxide. This produces an ionization “hole” in the region of injection. In nighttime conditions when the ma-jority of experiments were performed, this hole was filled with hydrogen ions from the plasmasphere, thus changing the ion composition in the vicinity of the hole and incoherent scatter spectra. For successful observation of the ioni-zation hole dynamics, the critical factors are the degree of filling of the antenna pattern with exhaust products and the velocity of the thermospheric neutral wind, which makes exhaust gases move from the antenna pattern. These two factors lead to poor repeatability of successful experiments. Successful experiments recorded a decrease in electron density up to 35 % in the hole that existed for 30 min. The lifetime of the region with high concentration of H+ ions can be as long as one hour.

Keywords

• Ionosphere
• Electron density
• Active space experiments
• Exhaust product injection into ionospheric plasma