Recent progress on the retrieval and modeling of thermosphere mass density

• Published in: 地球与行星物理论评 Vol. 54; no. 4; pp. 434 - 454
• Main Authors: Jiuhou Lei, Ruoxi Li, Dexin Ren, Libin Weng, Haibing Ruan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Chinese
• Published: Editorial Office of Reviews of Geophysics and Planetary Physics 01.07.2023
• Subjects: neutral density retrieval; thermosphere; thermospheric model
• ISSN: 2097-1893
• DOI: 10.19975/j.dqyxx.2022-047

The thermosphere is the atmospheric layer extending from about 90 km to nearly 1000 kilometers, which is an important interreaction area between the Sun and the Earth. Under the effects of solar radiation flux changes, geomagnetic activities, and low atmospheric forcings, the thermosphere could undergo significant changes. On the other hand, the thermospheric molecule flow collides with space objects, leading to the drag effect, which impacts significantly on the trajectories of space objects. In this paper, we first survey multiple density retrieval methods. The space object tracking data has the advantage of a large amount of data and has long been used for density retrieval since the 1960s. However, the density from this method suffers from low accuracy and time resolution. With the development of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), satellite Precise Orbit Determination (POD) data was utilized to derive thermospheric density with higher accuracy and time resolution. The accelerometers of some ge