Space Environment, Anomaly, and Radiation Effects Committee Newsletter, Issue 3, July 1986

Modern satellite systems, weather and global communication installations, and many defense programs have become dependent on knowledge of the condition of the near-earth space environment. Military spacecraft, commercial communication satellites, and a wide variety of other scientific and operational space systems require information about solar and ionospheric conditions, magnetospheric disturbance levels, and solar and galactic cosmic ray fluxes. Without such knowledge, these systems cannot operate effectively. A particularly important aspect of the solar-terrestrial environment is the possibility that it may produce operational anomalies in spacecraft. The radiation dose effect of flying continually or repeatedly through the trapped radiation belts produces one of the clearest effects on spacecraft operations. Since the inner radiation zones are very stable with time, they must be very well modeled. Three primary forms of radiation affect spacecraft systems in the outer magnetosphere. These are: (1) solar flare particles, (2) magnetosphere substorm particles, and (3) very high energy electrons. 12 refs., 3 figs