Proton Radiation Belt Anisotropy as Seen by ICARE-NG Head-A

The Influence sur les Composants Avancés des Radiations de l'Espace-Nouvelle Génération (ICARE-NG) instrument onboard the Argentinian satellite Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-D (SAC-D) detected much more protons during descending orbits (when latitude decreases) than for ascending orbits (increasing latitudes). In this paper, we will investigate the anisotropy seen by ICARE-NG Head-A for protons in the coincidence mode from Monte Carlo simulations performed with GEANT4. Our simulations show that the difference in the fluxes observed during ascending and descending orbits comes from the fact that the instrument observed trapped protons or not on each point of the orbits as a result of the instrument and satellite orientations. In addition, we show in this paper that the measurements performed by ICARE-NG can be used in conjunction with our GEANT4 simulations to study the anisotropy of trapped protons, i.e., their distribution relative to their equatorial pitch angle.