We explore the vertical convective flux Fc in a radiative-convective grey atmosphere. An expression of the form Fc = Fsτo/(C +Dτo) appears useful, where Fs is the shortwave flux absorbed at the base of an atmosphere with longwave optical depth τo and C and D are constants. We find excellent agreement with an idealized grey radiative-convective model with no shortwave absorption for D = 1 and C ...

The present research studies the motion of a particle or a spacecraft that comes from an orbit around the Sun, which can be elliptic or hyperbolic, and that makes a passage close enough to the Earth such that it crosses its atmosphere. The idea is to measure the Sun-particle two-body energy before and after this passage in order to verify its variation as a function of the periapsis distance, a...

This paper presents results from a contingency trajectory analysis performed for the Lunar Atmosphere & Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission in the event of a missed lunar-orbit insertion (LOI) maneuver by the LADEE spacecraft. The effects of varying solar perturbations in the vicinity of the weak stability boundary (WSB) in the Sun-Earth system on the trajectory design are analyzed and di...

The Earth Radiation Budget at the top of the atmosphere quantifies how the Earth gains energy from the Sun and loses energy to space. It is of fundamental importance for climate and climate change. In this paper, the current state-of-the-art of the satellite measurements of the Earth Radiation Budget is reviewed. Combining all available measurements, the most likely value of the Total Solar Irr...