ILWS Newletter - Volume 4

As always, it has been a busy quarter for ILWS. We had many exciting reports and excellent participation in our annual Working Group meeting held June 11 - 12 in Prague Czechoslovakia. We are indebted to Zdenek Nemecek and Jana Safrankova for generously serving as hosts. Please feel free to review the meeting minutes for more details.

We also are completing the formation of a new task group, focusing on Heliospheric research, and looking into a means of assessing and supporting data coordination within ILWS. These activities will continue to stimulate discussions and new collaborations, as have the other task groups. Additionally, Michael Hesse, head of the Community Coordinated Modeling Center, has agreed to serving on the ILWS Working Group in an ex officio capacity. He will be representing the concerns and capabilities of the greater modeling community. Welcome, Michael!

The planning for the upcoming ILWS Community Workshop in Brazil is moving along smoothly. The meeting will be held in October 2009, and our dedicated International Steering Committee has developed a slate of exciting topics that has been endorsed by the ILWS Steering Committee.

Finally, we would like to make a strong request to our colleagues in support of a new mission assessment activity. We have established misson description templates for all science missions that are associated with or pertinent to ILWS, and we would like to request your efforts in completing these templates for all relevant missions. With your support, we hope this survey will be of great utility to our extended science community.

As always, I thank you again for your dedication.

Sincerely,

Madulika Guhathakurta
ILWS Steering Committee Chair

2) National Delegate and Task Group Reports

Space Weather Activities in Norway

submitted by Pål Brekke, ILWS Delegate for the Norwegian Space Centre
Norway has long traditions in studies of space wether since we are located right beneath the auroral zone. For this reason there is a large number of space weather instruments currently operated in northern Norway and on the Svalbard island in the Arctic. This includes among others the facilities at Andøya Rocket Range, the Eiscat radars in Tromsø¸ and at Svalbard, an extensive network of magnetometers and the newly opened aurora observatory - Kjell Henriksen Observatory (KHO) at Svalbard. The KHO contains 30 instrument rooms with domes which can be rented by instrument groups. In the future we also plan to install instruments at the Norwegian Troll Base in Antarctica.
The interest for operational space weather activities has been fairly low in spite of our location. However there has been some interest and activity from power grid companies and the oil companies. For example, the University of Tromsø¸ is providing real time gemagnetic data to the drilling operators in the North Sea on a commercial basis. Norway also has both a commercial and governmental operators of ionospheric monitoring services using geodetic GPS reference stations.
For operational space weather activities Norway will be especially interested in the rapid ionospheric changes affecting navigation accuracy over the large ocean areas in the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. In fact, Norway has responsibility for issuing navigation accuracy warnings to seafarers in these areas. Dynamic positioning of oil drilling ships/platforms, directional drilling, radiocommunication, and helicopter operations in the polar night have especially strong needs for space weather information.
Norway's position is to have an active role in practical SW activities in the future and to participate in ESAs new program Space Situational Awareness. A more complete summary of these activities can be found in Dr. Brekke's report from the past Working Group Meeting.

3) New People

Meet Dr. Michael Hesse of the Community Coordinated Modeling Center

Dr. Michael Hesse has agreed to serve on the ILWS Working Group in an ex officio capacity, representing modeling activities and collaborations. As the Director of the Community Coordinated Modeling Center, he has gained experience and is very familiar with the challenges of coordinating multi-agency modeling efforts.
He received his M.S. degree and Ph. D. from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany in 1985 and 1988, respectively. His interests, in addition to numerical modeling of space plasmas, include magnetotail dynamics, plasmoid formation and evolution and magnetic reconnection.
He currently heads the Space Weather Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Meet Dr. Terry Onsager, new ILWS Delegate for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

As a new member of ILWS, I would like to take this opportunity to mention my background and to describe some of my goals. Earth's magnetosphere has been the focus of my research. This has included studies of the electron and ion foreshock regions, quasi-parallel shocks, the magnetopause, the cusp, the plasma sheet boundary layer, the location and consequences of reconnection in the plasma sheet and on the magnetopause, and most recently, the dynamics of radiation belt electrons. At the Space Weather Prediction Center, our goal is to provide accurate predictions and specifications of the most important space weather conditions, using the advanced data and models made available through worldwide research. I look forward to working with ILWS to communicate society's needs for space weather information and to utilize the new capabilities that are made available through research advances.

Dr. Terry Onsager joins the ILWS team as the new delegate representing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He is a researcher at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center.

4) Science Updates

Report and Results from the 2008 ILWS Working Group Meeting

This year's ILWS Working Group Meeting attracted quite a few ILWS delegates and led to some excellent discussions of future collaboration. We owe a great deal of thanks to Zdenek Nemecek and Jana Safrankova of Charles University; their efforts ensured that our trip to Prague was both interesting and producted. A highlight of the meeting was Dr. Zdenek's science keynote presentation "Reaction of the bow shock and magnetopause on IP shocks: Multipoint observations and MHD modeling."

Presentations and minutes from the meeting are available at:
http://ilws.gsfc.nasa.gov/ilws_mtg_prague08.htm

Status of the KuaFu Mission

submitted by Drs. C.-Y. Tu, J.-S. Wang and C. Wang

Chuanyi Tu, on behalf of the KuaFu work group
Jingson Wang, the project scientist of the background project
Chi Wang, member of the planning and coordination committee of the background project

The KuaFu mission is a space storm, aurora and Space Weather explorer. KuaFu is designed to obtain the full-range observations of the end-to-end cause-effect-chain of Space Weather between the solar atmosphere and geospace. The KuaFu Project comprises of three satellites (see figure). One of the three spacecraft, KuaFu-A, will be located at the first Lagrangian point (L1) and primarily used for the observation of solar EUV and FUV emissions, white-light coronal mass ejections, radio bursts, and local plasma and particle distributions. KuaFu-B1 and B2 will be placed in polar elliptical orbits around Earth, with a phase difference equivalent to half of an orbital period, in order to collect 24/7 continuous imaging of the northern aurora borealis and inner magnetosphere.

Schematic of the three satellites (KuaFu-A, KuaFu-B1 and KuaFu-B2 proposed by the KuaFu project

KuaFu-B1 and B2 will carry identical sets of imaging instruments and instruments for in situ observations. The overall objectives of the KuaFu Project are as follows:
Concentrate on the observation of continuous systemic changes in the solar-terrestrial storms;
Investigate flows of energy and solar matters and their interactions in the Sun-Earth System;
Improve the forecast quality of space hazards;
Create opportunities to advance solar-terrestrial physics.

The KuaFu project is now a background mission project of Chinese National Space Administration. The "Feasibility Study of the Global System for KuaFu Project" , sponsored by CNSA, was completed in April 2008. The English versions of the "Report on scientific objectives and measurement requirements" and the "Payload Definition Document" are available on request. These two documents are based on the preliminary assessment study by an international working group, consisting of over 30 scientists from more than 10 countries. The future science management requires the development of an international collaboration of CNSA with all related national funding agencies, ESA, CSA. Officials of CNSA expressed a possibility for them to support the international collaborations on scientific payloads and support two of the three satellites including platforms and launches. Exploration is needed on the possibility of collaborations of CNSA with other domestic or international agencies on the preparations of platform and the launch. This possibility will be discussed on the KuaFu working group meeting during the third KuaFu Science symposium.

The Third International Symposium of KuaFu Project (ISKP-III) will be held in Kunming, Yunnan, China, September 14-19, 2008. The ISKP-III home page is at http://www.spaceweather.ac.cn/ISKP-3. According to the recent report by Gang Qin there are 87 scholars registered, among whom 44 are from China, 27 are from Europe, 14 are from US, and 2 are from Canada. For the 74 registered presentations, 37 are invited oral talks and the rest are posters. Right now the registration is still open for posters.

5) Announcements and Upcoming Events

Special Request: ILWS Mission Summaries

We have a special request to make of all ILWS colleagues! We would like to complete a comprehensive survey of all ILWS missions, including both missions in development and those that are operational. All missions of relevance to ILWS are needed, so that we may have a complete understanding of our assets at our fingertips.
Templates for this activity have been produced; the fields in the templates are relatively simple, and we anticipate that ILWS delegates and science community members will be able to complete them relatively quickly. We hope to receive completed summaries by the end of October 2008.
ILWS Mission Summary Templates

ILWS Community Workshop: Brazil 2009

- Solar-Heliosphere general session
- Magnetosphere-Ionosphere-upper atmosphere general session
- Low latitude electrodynamics
- Extreme magnetic storms
- Space weather research in Brasil and EQUARS satellite
- Solar and geomagnetic activity influence on Earth's climate
- Overview of relevant missions worldwide: STEREO, THEMIS, SDO, SO, MMS, RBSP, SP, C/NOFS, Hinode, KuaFu, and others

A general meeting announcement should be out soon. Please watch the ILWS News Page for updates.

Third International Symposium of the KuaFu Project: 14 - 19 September 2008

Please see KuaFu report above.

IHY-AGU Chapman Conference on Universal Heliophysical Processes
Savannah, Georgia, USA
10 - 14 November 2008

Abstract submission and pre-registration now open at the conference website: http://www.agu.org/meetings/chapman/2008/gcall

Abstract Deadline: 12 September

Conference Conveners:
Nancy Crooker, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Marina Galand, Imperial College, London, UK

About this Newsletter

The ILWS Newsletter will be released on a quarterly basis. Submissions for and inquiries about this newsletter can be sent to Barbara Thompson at barbara.j.thompson {at} nasa.gov.
The current and archived versions of ILWS newsletters will be posted on the ILWS website at http://ilws.gsfc.nasa.gov.

1) ILWS Steering Committee Chair's Report