Space Weather Effects on GEO Satellite Anomalies during 1997-2009

Numerous operational anomalies and satellite failures have been reported since the beginnings of the "space age". Space weather effects on modern spacecraft systems have been emphasized more and more as increasing their complexity and capability. Energetic particles potentially can destroy and degrade electronic components in satellites. We analyzed the geostationary (GEO) satellite anomalies during 1997-2009 to search possible influences of space weather on the satellite anomalies like power problem, control processor problem, attitude control problem, etc. For this we use particle data from GOES and LANL satellites to investigate space weather effects on the GEO satellites' anomalies depending on Kp index, local time, seasonal variation, and high-energy electron contribution. As results, we obtained following results: (1) there is a good correlation between geomagnetic index(Kp) and anomaly occurrences of the GEO satellite; (2) especially during the solar minimum, occurrence of the satellite anomalies are related to electron flux increase due to high speed solar wind; (3) satellite anomalies occurred more preferentially in the midnight and dawn sector than noon and dusk sector; (4) and the anomalies occurred twice more in Spring and Fall than Summer and Winter; (5) the electron with the lowest energy channel (50-75keV) has the highest correlation (cc=0.758) with the anomalies. High association between the anomalies and the low energy electrons could be understand by the facts that electron fluxes in the spring and fall are stronger than those in the summer and winter, and low-energy electron flux is more concentrated in the dawn sector where the GEO satellite anomalies occurred more frequently than high-energy electron flux. While we could not identify what cause such local time dependences, our results shows that low-energy electrons (~100keV) could be main source of the satellite anomaly, which should be carefully taken into account of operating satellites.