Conveners
TDM14 - Data utilisation preparation of ESA's upcoming Aurora Mission
- Stefan Kraft (ESA)
- Mehdi Scoubeau (ESA)
Description
As part of the Space Safety Programme, ESA’s Space Weather Office is preparing a small satellite mission for monitoring the Auroral Oval (AO) for operational space weather applications. This mission will be part of ESA’s Distributed Space Weather Sensors System (D3S), which has the purpose of monitoring the interaction of the Earth with the Sun and to assess and measure the actual conditions in the proximity of the Earth. Monitoring of the aurora is an important element of enhanced space weather nowcasting and forecasting capability since it enables the observation of the impact of the solar wind and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) on Earth’s magnetosphere and upper atmosphere. The impacts may trigger geomagnetic storms and sub-storms when hitting the Earth. Auroral emissions (optical, far-UV and X-ray) are a direct manifestation of physical processes occurring when the magnetosphere responds to the solar wind and CME plasma streams. It is planned to launch a demonstration mission in the time frame 2030/2031 that shall pave the way towards an operational system consisting of a constellation of 4 satellites that would be launched about 2-3 years later.
The topical discussion will focus on the following questions:
• Which potential new services and products can be established by using the observational data of the mission?
• Which possible enhancements of existing services can be envisaged?
• Which developments would have to be carried out to enable future service and product provisions.
• What improvements in terms of the expected data quality or mission requirements are desirable for the identified services or product.
• Which observational capabilities are desirable in terms of monitoring specific features or events in different space weather conditions (e.g. substorm monitoring, global mapping capabilities, pointing strategy).
