Particle Count from Camera Suite on Formation Flying Spacecraft Pair in HEO

Onboard the Proba-3 mission, each spacecraft is suited with three micro-Advanced Stellar Compass (µASC) CCD-based cameras providing simultaneous attitude data, supporting the onboard GNC kernel and the Vision Based Sensor (VBS) for formation flight.

Alongside the image analysis process for star location, the particle induced CCD effects are isolated and counted for each of the individual cameras. This count information is reported out alongside the attitude information telemetry, associating the data with an attitude and timestamp.

The Proba-3 mission operates in a Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) regime with perigee at 600km and apogee at 60.000km, and an orbit period of 19.7hours. This orbit configuration enables great coverage of both the inner and outer particle zones of the Earths magnetic field, with the ability to provide both high and low frequency variations in the detection streams. Furthermore, the asymmetric shielding structure and distributed pointing directions of the individual cameras provides directional information of the detected particles.

In this work we present the observed data of the up-till now detections observed aboard the Proba-3 mission, aligned with position, direction and solar activity, resulting in a detailed radiation map for the given energy ranges that the µASC system is sensitive to.