The Satellites for Auroral Tomography in Space (SATIS) Project: Tomographic Reconstruction of the Auroral Emissions From Space

The satellites for auroral tomography in space (SATIS) project is a mission concept that proposes to perform auroral tomography from space using imagers placed on a constellation of satellites. Auroral tomography is particularly interesting for reconstructing the flux of particles precipitating into the atmosphere. The advantage of space observations is that they avoid cloud cover problems, allowing larger set of data and with a dedicated ground-based infrastructure ensure quasi-continuous monitoring. However, the main difficulty of this mission is to synchronize orbits and attitudes of the satellites in order to observe the same volume of emission at the same time and from different perspectives. The attitude and determination control system will thus have to be very precise and stable. The data volume is also an issue especially in a monitoring point of view. Furthermore, atmospheric drag will have to be correctly considered to limit orbit disturbances and keep satellites synchronized. We present here the preliminary study of this project and the initial requirements identified to be able to perform this mission concept.