Disturbances from single event upsets in the GRACE follow-on laser ranging interferometer

Abstract

The GRACE – Follow On (GRACE-FO) satellite mission (2018-now) hosts the novel Laser Ranging Interferometer (LRI), a technology demonstrator for proving the feasibility of laser interferometry for inter-satellite ranging measurements. The GRACE-FO mission extends the valuable climate data record of changing mass distribution in the system Earth, which was started by the original GRACE mission (2002–2017). The mass distribution can be deduced from observing changes in the distance of two low-earth orbiters employing interferometry of electromagnetic waves in the K-Band for the conventional K-Band Ranging (KBR) and in near-infrared for the novel LRI. This paper identifies possible radiation-induced Single Event Upset (SEU) events in the LRI phase measurement. We simulate the phase data processing within the Laser Ranging Processor (LRP) and use a template-based fitting approach to determine the parameters of the SEU and subtract the events from the ranging data. Over four years of LRI data, 31 of such events were identified and characterized.