Small Satellite Mission Concepts for Space Weather Research and as Pathfinders for Operations

Abstract

Solar activity drives rapid variations in the radiation and plasma environment in interplanetary and geospace. These variations occur on timescales of minutes and hours, associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), to a few days, as complex magnetic features on the Sun, such as active regions and coronal holes, rotate across the solar disk. These phenomena result in orders-of-magnitude increases in the fluxes of high-energy (extreme ultraviolet [EUV], and especially X-ray and gamma ray) photons and energetic, often relativistic particles (electrons, protons, alphas, and heavier ions) streaming through interplanetary space. These enhanced photon and particle fluxes pose direct risks to humans and electronics in space. The increased radiation and associated propagating disturbances in the interplanetary magnetic field (e.g., from CMEs or so-called "co-rotating

Addressing Gaps in Space Weather Operations and Understanding With Small Satellites

“…SmallSats have a potential to enable cutting-edge heliophysics science (NASEM, 2016). A number of successful missions have already demonstrated such capability (Spence et al, 2020), and many future missions have been funded or proposed, including a number with direct relevance to space weather science and operations (e.g., Caspi et al, 2020;Klenzing et al, 2019). Some of the key advantages of using SmallSats for progressing heliophysics science are their high-heritage technology, rapid replaceability, low cost, and constellation opportunities for distributed measurements.…”

“…For example, MiniCOR (Korendyke et al, 2015), a 6U Cubesat-compatible version of the STEREO/SECCHI COR2 coronagraph, fulfills NOAA's operational requirements for a coronagraph, except for the extended lifetime requirement for operational payloads. The recently-selected PUNCH Small Explorer will also include a miniaturized coronagraph and three wide-field imagers, all on SmallSat platforms (see Caspi et al, 2020). Soft X-ray spectrometers such as those flown on MinXSS (Mason et al, 2016;Woods et al, 2017), a 3U CubeSat, can provide detailed spectral irradiance diagnostics of flares and active regions for better modeling of Earth ionospheric reactions to solar soft X-ray forcing (see also Sec.…”

“…Additionally, constellations of measurements can help capture the complex spatio-temporal reaction of the thermosphere to magnetic storm inputs, ranging from hundreds of km up to global scales. See Caspi et al (2020) for a more detailed discussion.…”

International Coordination and Support for SmallSat-enabled Space Weather Activities

“…As a result, SmallSats have made forays in almost every area of space, including science and exploration. Multiple prior missions exemplify the feasibility of using SmallSats for high-quality space weather-related research (Spence et al, 2020), while new missions promise to further expand these capabilities (Caspi et al, 2020).…”

“…We briefly summarize each challenge and conclude with recommendations on how the international space weather community may begin to address them. Whereas we focus here on issues requiring international coordination, other papers in this special issue highlight technological challenges and opportunities in applying SmallSats to achieve space weather goals (e.g., Caspi et al, 2020;Verkhoglyadova et al, 2020).…”