thermospheric mass density, short‐time prediction, ensemble learning, transfer learning, NRLMSISE‐00, Meteorology. Climatology, QC851-999, Astrophysics, QB460-466

Abstract Reliable short‐time prediction of thermospheric mass density along the satellite orbit is always essential but challenging for the operation of Low‐Earth orbit satellites. In this paper, three machine‐learning prediction algorithms are investigated, including the Bidirectional Long Short‐Term Memory, the Transformer, and the Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) ensemble model of the above models. We use satellite data from CHAMP, GOCE, and SWARM‐C to evaluate the robustness and accuracy of different density variations. The comparison demonstrates that all models achieve compelling predictions and are much better than NRLMSISE‐00. The LightGBM ensemble model (LE‐model) consistently outperforms others in accuracy and stability. Furthermore, when the obtained density data from the newly launched satellites are limited, the trained LE‐model can provide a valid prediction for the new satellite orbit by transfer learning. This study offers a promising insight into the short‐time prediction of thermospheric mass density using ensemble‐transfer learning and may be advantageous to future research on space whether.