Effective charging risks for orbital systems, either in surface, like ESDs, or internally, like internal discharges and dielectric break-through, are major issues for orbital systems. They led to numerous anomalies, as well several missions and payloads losses, in the past.
Such charging events are strongly driven by the variations of the space environment and the Sun activity. They are space-weather driven.
A real time and accurate forecast of such electrostatic risk appears especially critical today for sensitive operations like in-flight docking and refuelling, EOR or internal electrostatic sensitive devices operations.
The Space Suite Forecast Service is a real time space-weather driven online Web service able to predict in advance the surface and internal charging risk for space-systems in orbit through simple indicators easy to read directly usable for flight operations decision-making.
The Space Suite Forecast Service allows mission operators to anticipate and mitigate electrostatic risks before anomalies occur.
Mission oriented, it can be adapted to the specificities (orbit, operations, platform design, technologies…) and the criteria of risks for each mission and realistic space systems.
Widely validated in GEO/MEO, the SpaceSuite Forecast Service is the unique worldwide real time, mission oriented online service to forecast surface and internal charging risks up-to 4 days in advance.
Our services includes:
- Configuration by our expert to each mission
- Dedicated and secured area on our servers to respect the privacy of each operator
- Service operation on our servers on a yearly based subscription fee
- Handling of specific scenario and dedicated sensitive missions phases
- Technical support of our experts on charging risk analysis and past anomalies analysis
- In option, daily survey by our experts and notifications.
- In option, review and identification by our experts of design driven risk factors
Completed by richer and detailed outputs, like the time evolution of the differential charging or electric field and 3D data, he Space Suite Forecast Service constitutes as well a powerful tool for deeper analysis and better understanding of observed anomalies.
More information and quotations on demand
A wider scientific and technical context
Issued from innovative R&D work performed in the frame of the European H2020/PAGER project, the Space Suite Forecast Service is based on the integration of advanced 1D/3D charging analysis software, including SPIS, downstream reference environment predictions models, provided by the GFZ laboratory of Potzdam University of Potsdam, Germany.
Operated since 2023
The Space Suite Charging Risk Forecast Service is continuously operated sing 2023 for several reference missions, publicly available and illustrates the technical capabilities of our service
Reference publications
The Space Suite Charging Risk Forecast Service has been widely validated on several references cases and charging events. This validation work has led to several scientific publications and communications.