Space Weather (SWe) refers to environmental conditions in Earth’s magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere due to Sun and solar wind that can influence the functioning of space-borne and ground-based systems or endanger human health.
Remote sensing of Energetic Neutral Atoms (ENAs) provides detailed information on the ring current plasma population at energies below 100 keV which are relevant for spacecraft operations.
Up-to-now this technique has only been used from high altitude polar orbiting spacecraft which do not allow a continuous monitoring and discrimination of the particle latitude distribution.
The consortium proposes to develop an ENA imager, namely ENAMISS, for continuous monitoring of the spatially distributed ring current plasma population. The instrument design will be based on a proven technology and will provide high angular resolution in a wide field of view, with discrimination between H and O species and energy resolution.
The Italian Space Agency (ASI) is willing to support launch and operation of the instrument on the International Space Station (ISS) thanks to its rights in the framework of a Memorandum of Understanding with NASA. ISS is the ideal platform to perform continuous ENA monitoring since its particular low altitude and medium/low latitude orbit allows wide-field ENA images of various magnetospheric regions.
The measured raw data will be continuously downloaded to the KI User Support Operation Centre (USOC) and stored in a database. Further processing will include calibration, deconvolution and algorithms to provide ion and electron fluxes as a function of position and energy. Existing models and related data from other missions will be used to validate both methodology and outputs.
Regular monitoring of the inner magnetosphere is the missing link in the complex chain of phenomena describing the Sun-Earth relationship. ENA monitoring data products will be a crucial contribution to filling this gap.
An ad-hoc web-based service will provide to users the following data products:
• near-real time calibrated data
• deconvolved ion distributions
• ion-derived simulated electron distributions
• near-real time ion / electron spectral distribution at specific spacecraft locations (e.g. GOES, Galileo)
• radiation dose models
• specific data products tailored to user needs.
The first five products will be freely distributed for the first two years for institutional organizations, whereas the last one will be negotiated on customer basis.
