Pilot Service for Improving Satellite Re-entry Predictions and Orbital Decay Modeling

This paper briefly describes the content of the proposal submitted by ISTI, an Institute of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), in response to the ESA/ESTEC AO/1-4246/02/NL/LvH on Pilot Project for Space Weather Applications. The principal aim of the envisaged work is to study, test and evaluate a space weather service to improve the satellite orbital decay modeling and the accuracy of re-entry predictions. The limitations of the currently used atmospheric density models and solar flux proxies will be investigated in quantitative detail and compared with the potential advantages of using a new temperature equation in the Jacchia-Roberts 1971 model and the E10.7 parameter, from the SOLAR2000 project, to represent the solar flux.