European Space Agency — European Space Agency¶

Royal Belgian Institute for Aeronomy¶

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G.01 - What is the purpose of the library?¶

Answer¶

The UNILIB library was developed by the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy for the ESA/ESTEC TREND project (Trapped Radiation ENvironment Development, ESA contracts 11711/95/NL/JG and 17025/94/NL/JG)

The main objectives of this project are to improve the radiation environment models and software used to predict the radiation experienced by satellites and spacecraft in orbit around the Earth.

The UNILIB library implements tools to compute the geomagnetic field, to trace magnetic field lines and drift shells and to evaluate averaged quantities along a drift trajectory. It allows to compute specific coordinates for the geomagnetically trapped particles such as the magnetic field intensity at the mirror points Bm, the McIlwain parameter Lm, the third adiabatic invariant, the Roederer parameter L*, the altitude of the lowest mirror point hmin, etc.

The UNILIB library allows also to evaluate the effects of the interaction of trapped protons with the atmosphere by the averages of physical quantities over one longitudinal drift period of the trapped particles. The physical quantities may, for instance, be the amount of atmospheric material encountered by the particle, the number of charge-exchange collisions experienced by the trapped particle, the energy lost by the trapped particle, etc.

Illustration¶

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See Also¶

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UNILIB/tags/v3.02