ESA SSA SWE Activities

ESA SSA (Space Situational Awareness) SWE (Space Weather) is focusing on the monitoring conditions at the Sun and in the solar wind, and in Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere. Space Weather Products can be found at http://swe.gfz-potsdam.de/.

• Swarm Utilisation Analysis (SUA)
• ESC Ionospheric Weather - definition and development activities
• ESC Geomagnetic Conditions - definition and development activities

Swarm Utilisation Analysis (SUA)

Space Weather (SWE) describes the state and variations of the Earth's natural space environment that can adversely affect humankind and its infrastructure in space and on ground. One of the foremost aims of space situational awareness (SSA) is to provide rapid space weather services to society and industry. ESA's SSA programme develops a system to monitor and predict Space Weather and to disseminate information and alerts. Continuous monitoring of the space environment including fast processing of observations is the crucial prerequisite to any Space Weather activities. ESA's Swarm satellite constellation mission provides key observables of space weather such as precise magnetic field variations, ionospheric plasma drift, electron density, thermospheric density, GPS-derived total electron content, and ionospheric currents and irregularities. The Swarm SUA project evaluates the space weather capabilities of the Swarm mission and will be of highest relevance for other, as well as future LEO missions with similar instrumentation.

More information about this project can be found at
https://www.gfz-potsdam.de/en/section/geomagnetism/projects/sua-swarm-utilisation-analysis/
Project duration: March 2016 - September 2017.

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ESC Ionospheric Weather - definition and development activities

The overall objective of the work is to ensure operational and development activities within the Ionospheric Weather Expert Service Centre (I-ESC) of ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Space Weather (SWE) network.
Developed ESC domains are supported by the SWE Data Centre, which provides reliable access to a range of key space weather datasets, provision for data archiving and hosting of some applications. The services are further provided via the SWE web portal.
The main interface with the Space Weather Coordination Centre (SSCC) is represented by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), being the Coordinating Expert Group of I-ESC. Within this project GFZ is responsible for the following Swarm Utilisation Analysis (SUA) products: I.128 ROT, I.129 TEC, I.130 Ne and I.131 IBI.

More information about this project can be found at
http://swe.ssa.esa.int/en_GB/ionospheric-weather/
Project duration: September 2017 - December 2020.

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ESC Geomagnetic Conditions - definition and development activities

The overall objective of the work is to ensure operational and development activities within the Geomagnetic Conditions Expert Service Centre (G-ESC) of ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Space Weather (SWE) network.
Developed ESC domains are supported by the SWE Data Centre, which provides reliable access to a range of key space weather datasets, provision for data archiving and hosting of some applications. The services are further provided via the SWE web portal.
The main interface with the Space Weather Coordination Centre (SSCC) is represented by the Birkeland Centre for Space Science (BCSS) at the University of Bergen (UiB), being the Coordinating Expert Group of G-ESC. Within this project GFZ is responsible for the following Swarm Utilisation Analysis (SUA) products: G.123 PEJ, G.124 FAC and G.125 MAG.

More information about this project can be found at
http://swe.ssa.esa.int/en_GB/geomagnetic-conditions/
Project duration: August 2019 - December 2020.

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