Chapter 13: Characterizing Space Weather and Its Effects

13.1 Introduction

The environment of space is far from a perfect vacuum. Spacecraft must handle not only a tenuous neutral environment but also energetic photons, low- and high-energy charged particles, micrometeoroids, and orbital debris. As engineers know well, this environment can degrade the operational characteristics of space systems, so they must factor them into all stages of the design and development (Hastings and Garrett 1996 and Tribble 2003). For this reason, people who plan, acquire, and operate spacecraft must understand the space environment and ways interactions between the spacecraft and the environment could cause the former to malfunction.

This chapter briefly summarizes the space environment (space weather) and the effect of space on spacecraft systems (spacecraft-environment interactions). We assume you're a person who must use numerical simulations to quantify the environment and its effects. In particular, we examine the modeling and simulation (M&S) tools spacecraft designers and operators may use in a spacecraft program's life-cycle stages. We don't examine the environments and their effects in detail, nor do we review every conceivable modeling tool and its pros and...