Cost-Effective Very Low Earth Orbit Mission for Atmospheric Science

Understanding and characterizing wind, composition, and temperature in the lower thermosphere is critical for two main reasons. First, the processes controlling their spatial and temporal changes and how the neutral atmosphere interacts with the ionosphere and magnetosphere above is fundamental to our understanding of the mechanisms that drive and affect the Earth's upper atmosphere as well as in other planetary and stellar atmospheres. Second, space weather events, depending on how the upper atmosphere is affected by solar variability and lower-atmospheric disturbances, can severely harm spacecraft, human operations in space, and society's ground-based technological infrastructure. Very low Earth orbit (VLEO), in an altitude shell between 250 km and 350 km, offers a unique vantage point to undertake cost-effective missions to study atmospheric dynamics using spectroscopic instruments. Additionally, by performing limb sounding measurements, the spectroscopic system is characterized and validated in an environment representative of a planetary exploration mission. This paper discusses a cost-effective VLEO mission with next-generation spectrometer instruments capable of meeting the strict payload mass and power requirements of future small-platform deep space missions, while opening new science applications for compact, low-altitude platforms in Earth's orbit.