Model for short-term atmospheric density variations

Rising accuracy requirements for attitude and translation control systems of satellites require better models for the expected disturbance forces. A major non-conservative disturbance force in Low Earth Orbits (LEO) is the atmospheric drag. With current atmospheric models an estimation of the drag force can be calculated, however these atmospheric density models, like the NRLMSISE-00[3] model, do not include short-term density variations. These density variations call no longer be disregarded. This paper deals with the development of a model that, does include these short-term density variations.