Feasibility Study of Monitoring Earthquakes from Satellites in Orbit

Paper number

IAC-05-B1.2.01

Author

Prof. Tadashi Takano, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan

Year

2005

Abstract

An earthquake is one of the most furious natural disasters. Recently huge earthquakes occurred at Chuetsu, Japan in October, 2004 and at Sumatra, Indonesia with a great tsunami in December, 2004. In order to lessen the social loss, the detection or monitoring of earthquakes is quite important. There were many electro-magnetic ways of the detection: the change of the ground electric potential which is typically VAN method, very low frequency electro-magnetic waves or their effects to the earth’s atmosphere, and VHF wave propagation. Several significant data in these methods were obtained but still remains insufficient to resolve ambiguity.
This paper describes experimental results and theoretical analysis which suggest an earthquake monitoring system via microwaves. The microwaves can propagate through the ionosphere to revolving satellites, and are advantageous than the above-mentioned lower frequencies. The first step is the experimental verification of microwave emission due to rock crash in the laboratory. From a sample of gabbro rock with 27mm diameter and 60mm length, the power of 4nW was detected. On the basis of the experimental results, the emitted power from crashed rock around a seismic center can be calculated for the assumed size of the crash in a real earthquake. Accordingly, at a satellite in a low earth orbit, the microwave receiving level can be estimated with several assumptions. It is shown that an earthquake with a crashed rock with 800m radius could be detected with an obtainable receiver on the satellite. In order to verify the hypothesis and estimation results, the actual data of the microwave receiving level were gathered and analyzed for several satellites which fly above the points of great earthquakes in the world. Significant features are revealed in the data after the Chuetsu earthquake so that the estimation and hypotheses are shown to be valid.
Finally, the earthquake monitoring system is conceived in a preliminary stage. Basic system parameters are studied corresponding to several kinds of applications. 

Abstract document

IAC-05-B1.2.01.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-05-B1.2.01.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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