Contributions of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite missions to the provision of space weather services in the ESA Space Weather Network

Kurzfassung

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Programme aims to develop space weather (SWE) products that will help predicting the severe SWE events, which can have devastating effects on critical infrastructures in the EU, such as communication and navigation systems, power grids, aviation, etc. Currently, a comprehensive system to monitor, predict and disseminate SWE information and alerts is in development, which will help reducing costs and improving the reliability of these infrastructures. The fundament of the ESA SWE Network are five Expert Service Centres (ESCs), each focusing on different topics. The Ionosphere ESC comprises the expertise on the ionosphere and thermosphere monitoring, modeling, nowcasting and forecasting. It provides products and services that are tailored to the needs of communication and navigation system users, which rely on the transmission of radio signals and operators in the space surveillance and tracking domain who need space weather information, e.g. for proper satellite drag calculation. Four Swarm derived ionosphere products are the first LEO satellite measurements provided in different services on the SSA SWE Portal (http://swe.ssa.esa.int/). These are in-situ electron densities, Total Electron Content (TEC), Rate Of change of TEC (ROT) and the Ionosphere Bubble Index (IBI). These products are excellent for research and validation of ground-based products. But, the applicability for end-users in the transionospheric radiolink and space surveillance and tracking domains is rather low. Limitations in the simultaneous spatial-temporal coverage of the given region and the timeliness of the data were identified as critical points (lessons learned for the future missions). This initiated discussions on the usage of Swarm data in the SSA SWE Network, how to best use space-based monitoring of thermosphere and ionosphere conditions in the Ionosphere ESC. Perspectives and potential use of Swarm products and other LEO satellite missions are going to be described in this presentation.