Speaker
Description
Solar storms are space weather phenomena that can impact critical infrastructure both in space and on the ground, astronauts’ health, and the Earth’s environment. Gaining more knowledge about them is necessary to improve the monitoring, predictions, and risk management of space weather. Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) can induce geomagnetic storms, enhancing the auroral oval. Solar flares can cause temporary radio blackouts, and Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs) can damage spacecraft electronics. Satellite operations, rocket launches, and re-entry events are all influenced by space weather conditions.
Auroras are optical displays that can provide insights about precipitating particles from solar storms. Investigating aurora will improve our understanding of how the Sun’s activity is coupled with Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere.
Furthermore, SEP collisions in the atmosphere can produce gaseous radical species, which chemically destroy ozone. This may lead to ozone depletion distributed over wide areas and altitudes. This is currently poorly constrained, which is a challenge for understanding the dynamics of the atmosphere, vital to climate research.
The Centre for Space Sensors and Systems (CENSSS) at the University of Oslo is designing, building, launching, and operating a space situational awareness mission, CENSSAT-1, with collaborations from industry and university partners.
The main objectives are to monitor space weather in low Earth orbit and to study the response of the Earth’s upper and middle atmosphere to space weather events.
The 12U satellite will carry four physical payloads to investigate several science cases in space situational awareness. A multi-needle Langmuir probe will obtain local plasma measurements at high resolution. A particle detector will detect SEP, gamma rays, and neutrons. A camera with four bandpass filters, centered at 320 nm, 427.8 nm, 557.7 nm, and 630.0 nm, will monitor auroral and airglow emissions, and ozone variability. Ozone levels can be inferred from UV absorption with the stellar occultation method. The fourth physical payload is a radar that will detect mm-sized space debris in approximation to the spacecraft. In addition, there will be an optimal control and a drag experiment onboard.
The instruments will capture simultaneous measurements of the space radiation environment from LEO. The particle detector will trigger the camera to power on when a threshold level of particle flux is reached. The observation principle utilized for CENSSAT-1 may also be applied to other planetary missions, where forecasting space weather events is much more difficult. Besides, knowledge on the dependence of auroral emission on plasma parameters and incident particle properties will enable studies on auroras on other locations in the Solar system, such as Mars, which will again improve the understanding of their environments and interactions with the Sun.
The CENSSAT-1 mission recently entered phase B and is scheduled for launch in late 2027.
