Session 12 - Space weather needs and opportunities from upcoming space missions

David Berghmans (ROB), Francis Verbeeck (ROB)
Friday 18/11, 10:00-13:00
Delvaux

A new "Golden Age" of solar and heliospheric physics is approaching with innovative space missions being finalised in the industrial shipyards. The coming generation of space instruments will observe the solar environment closer than ever before (eg Solar Probe Plus), with the highest spatial resolution ever (eg Solar Orbiter) and with the largest instruments ever (eg PROBA-3). These missions are designed to boost our understanding of the solar atmosphere, heliosphere and will therefore bring opportunties to study space weather effects near Earth. It is important to realize however that these missions are not only data providers to feed research and models. As the newest missions are often strongly constrained in e.g. telemetry or duty cycle, models and space weather forecasts are also needed as input to operate the embarked instruments optimally. Modeling cannot anymore be just pure a-posteriori exercise to reproduce and explain observations. The limited observational capabilities have to be targeted to the physically most critical locations and times. Simulations and models can be of tremendous help in targeting a fleet of misisons and instruments, towards the areas/time ranges that determine the behavior of the larger system. In this session we invite presentations that focus on this interplay between space weather modelling and forecasts at one hand and optimal instrument operations at the other hand. Contributions from current and future continously operated missions (eg SDO, GOES, PROBA2) are equally welcome as they are essential providers of the situational awareness that instrument operators of science missions need.

Poster Viewing
Friday November 18, 10:00 - 11:00, Poster Area

Talks
Friday November 18, 11:00 - 13:00, Delvaux

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Talks : Time schedule

Friday November 18, 11:00 - 13:00, Delvaux

11:00	PROBA2: Science Mission and Space Weather Tool	West, M et al.	Oral
	Matthew West[1], Elke D'Huys[1], Katrien Bonte[1], Marie Dominique[1], Marilena Mierla[1], Robbe Vansintjan[1], Daniel Seaton[2,3]
	[1]Royal Observatory Belgium; [2]CIRES; [3]NOAA
	PROBA2 is an ESA micro-satellite launched on November 2, 2009. The science payload includes SWAP a compact EUV imager, and LYRA a solar UV radiometer. SWAP has a spectral band-pass centered on 17.4 nm and provides images of the low solar corona over a 54 by 54 arcmin field-of-view. LYRA acquires solar irradiance measurements at a high cadence in four broad spectral channels, from soft X-ray to MUV. These instruments make PROBA2 ideal for day-to-day space weather monitoring as well as being a capable science mission. PROBA2 was initially launched as a test bed for innovative technologies, and has since evolved into an ESA SSA space weather platform, providing observations for a suite of space weather tools, as well as providing science quality observations. Science missions are often considered unsuitable for operational needs due to flexible observing patterns, whereas operational missions often only offer rigid un-calibrated observing campaigns that cannot be adapted for science campaigns. In this presentation we will discuss the intricate interplay between running an operational and science capable mission. We will discuss how we prioritize and adapt our observing strategies for science campaigns without compromising our operational data. We will discuss some of the benefits of running a science and operational mission together
11:20	PROBA-3: a Formation Flying Solar Coronagraph Mission	Zhukov, A et al.	Invited Oral
	Andrei Zhukov[1,2]
	[1]Solar-Terrestrial Center of Excellence - SIDC, Royal Observatory of Belgium; [2]Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow State University, Russia
	PROBA-3 is the next ESA mission in the PROBA line of small technology demonstration satellites. The main goal of PROBA-3 is in-orbit demonstration of formation flying techniques and technologies. The mission will consist of two spacecraft together forming a giant (150 m long) coronagraph called ASPIICS (Association of Spacecraft for Polarimetric and Imaging Investigation of the Corona of the Sun). The bigger spacecraft will host the telescope, and the smaller spacecraft will carry the external occulter of the coronagraph. ASPIICS heralds the next generation of solar coronagraphs that will use formation flying to observe the inner corona in eclipse-like conditions for extended periods of time. The occulter spacecraft will also host the secondary payload, DARA (Davos Absolute RAdiometer), that will measure the total solar irradiance. PROBA-3 is planned to be launched in 2019. The scientific objectives of PROBA-3 will be discussed in the context of other future solar and heliospheric space missions (e.g. Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe Plus). A special attention will be paid to the interplay between space weather forecasting and optimal instrument operations. PROBA-3 will need space weather forecast to operate the ASPIICS coronagraph in an optimal way. The duty cycle of ASPIICS will allow observing only during limited periods of time, and the choice of these periods needs to be optimized to collect the data on as many coronal mass ejections (CMEs) as possible. This implies complex real-time science planning.
11:40	The New SUVI and EXIS Instruments on GOES-R: Bridging Solar Observations from Space Weather to Space Climate	Seaton, D et al.	Invited Oral
	Daniel B. Seaton[1, 2], Jonathan Darnel[1, 2], Janet Machol[1, 2]
	[1]Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA; [2]National Centers for Environmental Information, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, Colorado, USA
	NOAA’s GOES-R satellite, which launches this fall, will be the first of a line of four spacecraft that will provide observations of the Sun and near-Earth space environment continuously for the next twenty years. In particular, observations from the Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) and the Extreme Ultraviolet and X-ray Irradiance Sensors (EXIS) will help ensure the continuity of solar imagery and irradiance data sets well into the future. EXIS will extend a set of observations of X-ray flux measurements that began in 1974 to cover as many as six solar cycles by the end of the GOES-R-series mission and will also provide ultraviolet and Mg II index measurements. Likewise, SUVI builds on the heritage of SOHO/EIT, SDO/AIA, and PROBA2/SWAP and will continuously produce large field-of-view observations of the solar corona in extreme-ultraviolet that have become a mainstay of observational solar physics and space weather forecasting since the beginning of observations from SOHO in 1996. In this talk I will present these new instruments and their role in NOAA’s space weather forecasting mission, and discuss how careful intercalibration of observations from the GOES-R satellites with other solar observations will yield a continuous data set that can help us understand the evolution of solar activity on the longest timescales.
12:00	Discovering the Heliosphere with new eyes: future opportunities from Solar Orbiter and PROBA3 missions	Bemporad, A et al.	Invited Oral
	Alessandro Bemporad
	INAF-Turin Astrophysical Observatory
	In order to provide reliable Space Weather forecasting any future service will require on one hand new advanced instrumentations monitoring the Sun and transients propagating close to the Sun-Earth line, and on the other hand a much deeper understanding of different physical processes responsible for their origin, their interplanetary evolution and their interaction with the magnetosphere. In the near future ESA will launch two new missions devoted to the study of the Sun: the Solar Orbiter spacecraft (also in collaboration with NASA) and the PROBA3 paired satellites. Both these two challenging missions will provide really an unprecedent view of our star, that for the first time will be observed getting closer than Mercury, observing from an out-of-ecliptic vantage point, and performing artificial eclipses with duration of many hours. Nevertheless, these totally new observations will be acquired (for different technical reasons) at the expenses of the allocated amount of time, preventing a continuous monitoring of the Sun. For this reason, close collaboration and coordinated planning with other present (e.g. SOHO, STEREO) and future (e.g. Solar Probe Plus, Interhelioprobe) spacecraft exploring the Heliosphere will be mandatory to have a global picture of any Earth-affecting solar transient. Here these points will be discussed, focusing in particular on the new observations of the solar atmosphere that will be acquired by future coronagraphs and heliospheric imagers on-board Solar Orbiter and PROBA3 missions.
12:20	Update on ADAPT Model Development and Applications	Arge, C et al.	Invited Oral
	C. Nick Arge[1], Carl J. Henney[1], Kathleen Shurkin[2], Kyle Hickmann[3] and Humberto C. Godinez[3]
	[1]AFRL/Space Vehicles Directorate, Kirtland AFB, NM, USA; [2]Boston College and AFRL, Kirtland AFB, NM, USA; [3]Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA
	As the primary input to nearly all coronal models, reliable estimates of the global solar photospheric magnetic field distribution are critical for accurate modeling and understanding of solar and heliospheric magnetic fields. Over the last several years AFRL, in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the National Solar Observatory (NSO), has been developing a model that produces much more realistic estimates of the instantaneous global photospheric magnetic field distribution than that provided by traditional photospheric field synoptic maps. The Air Force Data Assimilative Photospheric flux Transport (ADAPT) model is a photospheric flux transport model, originally developed at NSO, that makes use of data assimilation methodologies developed at LANL. The flux transport model evolves the observed solar magnetic flux using relatively well understood transport processes when measurements are not available and then updates the modeled flux with new observations (available from both the Earth and the far side of the Sun) using data assimilation methods that rigorously take into account model and observational uncertainties. The ADAPT model is able to assimilate line-of-sight and vector magnetic field data from all observatory sources including the expected photospheric vector magnetograms from the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) on the Solar Orbiter. This talk provides an overview of the ADAPT model, recent and planned enhancements to it, and examples of how it is being used to improve coronal and solar wind modeling as well as space weather forecasts.
12:40	THOR-CSW beam tracking strategies: taking solar wind prediction to the extreme	De keyser, J et al.	Oral
	Johan De Keyser[1], Benoit Lavraud[2], Eddy Neefs[1], Sophie Berkenbosch[1], Michel Anciaux[1], Romain Maggiolo[1], Bram Beeckman[1], Carine Amoros[2], Andrei Fedorov[2], Ritu Baruah[2], Romain Mathon[2], Vincent Génot[2], Lubomir Prech[3]
	[1]Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, Brussels, Belgium; [2]Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Toulouse, France; [3]Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Prague, Czech Republic
	One of the competing proposals for the ESA Cosmic Vision M4 slot is THOR (Turbulence Heating ObserveR). If selected, this mission promises to address one of the most fundamental but also one of the least understood physical processes: turbulent energy dissipation and particle energization in space plasmas, including the solar wind. Not only is this mission an opportunity to learn more about the solar wind, it also takes solar wind prediction to feed into instrument operation to the extreme. The THOR-CSW instrument intends to measure solar wind 3D distribution functions with ~7% energy resolution and 1.5° angular resolution at an unprecedented cadence of only 150 ms. Combining high resolution and a rapid measurement cadence requires the spectrometer to intelligently make fast (within a few milliseconds) but very accurate short-term predictions of the energy and direction of the solar wind beam. We discuss different prediction or beam tracking strategies that are envisaged for this instrument. The advantage of beam tracking is that one can restrict the number of energy-azimuth-elevation bins that have to be scanned, resulting in a higher count rate and/or a faster velocity distribution function acquisition time. The technique is limited by the instrument design characteristics, which are optimized for a particular energy range and arrival direction. Beam tracking can be dangerous, however, because the quality of the prediction determines the risk to miss part of the velocity distribution or to lose track of the beam altogether. This is especially true if one downlinks only the moments, rather than the full distributions, since one then has no means of verifying whether the beam tracking strategy worked properly. We compare different prediction strategies and test them on synthetic data, some of which are very much inspired by actual data. Both internal beam tracking (relying on data from CSW itself) and external beam tracking (relying on data from the FAR instrument) are considered.

Posters

Friday November 18, 10:00 - 11:00, Poster Area