Modeling Earth Albedo for Satellites in Earth Orbit

Many satellite are influences by the Earthøs albedo, though very few model schemes exist.in order to predict this phenomenon. Earth albedo is often treated as noise, or ignored completely. When applying solar cells in the attitude hardware, Earth albedo can cause the attitude estimate to deviate with as much as 20 deg. Digital Sun sensors with Earth albedo correction in hardware exist, but are expensive. In addition, albedo estimates are necessary in thermal calculations and power budgets. We present a modeling scheme base4d on Eartht reflectance, measured by NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, in which the Earth Probe Satellite has recorded reflectivity data daily since mid 1996. The mean of these data can be used to calculate the Earth albedo given the positions of the satellite and the Sun. Our results show that the albedo varies highly with the solar angle to the satellite's field of view, and that the longitude of the satellite position is significant to the model output. The results also show that the calculated albedo is generally lower than it would be expected based only on the reflectivity data.