Orbital Decay of the Three SNIPE CubeSats During the Super Geomagnetic Storm in May 2024
Hosub Song, Ki‐Hwan Keum, Jaeheung Park, Tae‐Yong Yang, Jongdae Sohn, Youngbum Song, Yihua Zheng, Dae‐Hee Lee, Jaejin LeeAbstract
The Mother's Day (Gannon) geomagnetic superstorm of May 2024 produced extreme thermospheric heating and expansion, resulting in enhanced atmospheric drag on low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellites. We investigate storm‐time thermospheric drag and density variability using three satellites of the Small‐scale magNetospheric and Ionospheric Plasma Experiment (SNIPE) 6U CubeSat constellation, complemented by density measurements from Swarm, GRACE‐FO, and MSIS 2.1. Despite operating at nearly identical orbits, SNIPE‐B and SNIPE‐D experienced significantly different altitude losses during the storm, attributed to differences in effective along‐track cross‐sectional area arising from different attitude control modes—demonstrating that spacecraft configuration strongly influences drag even for identical CubeSat platforms. SNIPE‐B's drag‐derived density shows strong correlation with GRACE‐FO measurements, whereas MSIS 2.1 underestimates density near storm peaks. However, the inter‐altitude drag ratio between SNIPE‐A and SNIPE‐B agrees qualitatively with MSIS 2.1 predictions, suggesting the model captures thermospheric vertical structure under extreme force. These results demonstrate that publicly available two‐line element data, when combined with attitude information, provide a cost‐effective method for monitoring storm‐time thermospheric density. Our findings highlight the importance of attitude information in drag analyses and suggest that CubeSat constellations offer significant potential for thermospheric modeling and space weather monitoring.