Building a European space weather monitoring fleet

Reliable space weather services capable of providing accurate and timely information about ongoing and expected space weather conditions are impossible without the constant monitoring of the Sun and in-situ measurements of the space environment around Earth.

ESA’s space weather monitoring systems must perform remote observations of the Sun and measure local conditions in the heliosphere and the near-Earth environment. Watching from locations that maximise the efficiency of our forecasting models is key to increasing the warning time and reliability of our alarms.

The proposed ESA Space Safety activities will further develop and expand the Distributed Space Weather Sensor System (D3S),a series of small missions and hosted payloads to monitor the near-Earth environment for space weather conditions that may impact vulnerable infrastructure. As the data will be used continuously in operational services, the systems have a critical need for high reliability, long lifetimes and low data latencies

Next to its ground-breaking Vigil Cornerstone mission, the proposed ESA Space Safety activities for space weather sensors will:

Observe the signature of geomagnetic storms with Aurora-D and -C

The Aurora Demonstration (Aurora-D) mission will be the first step in the development of a system that will monitor auroras continuously from space. These observations provide essential input for the monitoring and modelling of geomagnetic storm conditions, including reconstruction of a storm afterwards to  better understand space weather events.

Aurora-D will also demonstrate the value of small satellites for auroral imaging, as a first step towards the implementation of a satellite constellation (Aurora-C). The four small satellites together can provide continuous coverage of the aurora from space.

Aurora will follow a circular polar Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) allowing to in addition monitor the magnetic fields and the radiation environment in the underexplored zone between the two electron radiation belts, producing valuable new data critical for its nowcasting and forecasting at a global scale.

Build two dedicated space weather nanosatellites with Swing and SAWA

Thanks to their increase in capability over recent years, nanosatellites offer a great opportunity to implement cost-effective, targeted space weather missions. Two missions are planned to monitor space weather effects with nanosatellites:

Swing (Space Weather Ionosphere Nanosat Generation) will monitor the ionosphere, a layer of the atmosphere which affects communications and navigation services. Swing’s data on the electron density, charged particle radiation and the solar x-ray flux will help to further understand the effects of space weather, produce accurate nowcasts of the state of the ionosphere and provide actionable information to European satellite operators.

SAWA is targeting complementary measurements in the Earth’s thermosphere, including the neutrals density and amount of atomic oxygen and of the Earth’s magnetic field. Like Swing, the data collected by SAWA will feed into models and services that provide space weather alerts, forecasting tools and other data products.

Inform us about Earth’s radiation belts with Sword

Radiation is dangerous for satellites. Spacecraft operators strive to minimise exposure and protect components. Yet satellites in low Earth orbit frequently traverse these regions and the high geosynchronous orbit is entirely within a radiation belt. Complicating matters, the belts’ intensity and boundaries are highly variable and difficult to predict.

The Sword (Space Weather Orbital Radiation Detector) mission, with its long elliptic geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), will provide data on Earth’s radiation belts at multiple altitudes allowing a nowcast of the overall belt status and thereby enabling essential services for spacecraft operators.

Monitor the solar wind with Shield

Current in-situ measurements of the solar wind and CMEs are done from Lagrange Point 1 (L1) and allow us to predict the impact of fast solar storms with only about 20 minutes warning time.

Located more than 15 million kilometres from Earth, approximately ten times further away than L1, another proposed mission, Shield , would be able to give an alert of such storms around two and a half hours before impact. This would allow operators of vulnerable infrastructure to prepare for and minimise geomagnetic storm impacts.

Shield would increase European independence in space weather observations and resilience against adverse impacts in all user domains, including defence.

Take advantage of other satellites to mount hosted payloads

Hosted payload missions, where third-party instruments are added to a mission, have proven to be cost-effective and efficient ways to implement space weather missions. ESA is exploring ‘piggyback’ opportunities to fly space weather instruments on partner missions.