Work Package 2 (Solar and interplanetary drivers of geospace conditions) has conducted extensive modelling of space weather events (CMEs and HSSs) all the way from the Sun's surface to Earth's magnetosphere. It focuses on determining the occurrence and propagation of the solar wind perturbations capable of affecting the terrestrial magnetosphere and on quantifying the predictability of key space weather driving parameters at Earth. Using neural networks, it provides quantification of when and how much energy is fed from the solar wind into the inner magnetosphere via the prediction of the Kp index.
Work package 3 (Inner magnetosphere dynamics) conducted extensive modelling of space weather events in the inner magnetosphere and carried out research to improve existing radiation belt models. It focused on modelling of the inner magnetosphere drivers for a space weather service dedicated to the Earth radiation belts. More specifically, it focused on the parameterization of cold plasma density by solar/IMF parameters from WP2, through the predicted Kp index. Moreover, WP3 focused on a prototype of an operational model of diffusion coefficients. For the purpose of a space weather service that provides forecast capabilities, special care has been devoted to quantify the benefits gained thanks to these improvements.
Work package 4 (Space Safety Service) was devoted to the definition, the design and the setup of the Safe Space services. It focused on energetic electron radiation belts, which potentially lead to internal spacecraft charging events. As a first step, user needs were collected, processed and classified by a major European space industry, Thales Alenia Space. This process led to the design of the radiation belt activity indices, which are now routinely derived and made available to any end-user on a dedicated web site.
These indices are based on daily averaged electron fluxes defined on three standard orbits: LEO, MEO and GEO. They are dedicated to the quantification of the internal charging risk for each of the three orbits. Besides, they serve in a three-color warning system, associated to three levels of risk: “quiet”, “moderate” if the daily averaged flux is among the 20% strongest historical fluxes values and “active” if the daily averaged flux is among the 2% strongest historical fluxes values. The historical flux values are built from long-term measurements over the three studied orbits to be as representative possible of the full range of the electron radiation belt dynamics.
A dedicated server for the retrieving, the processing, and the hosting of near-real time Environmental Monitoring Units (EMU) measurements from the units on-board Galileo satellite 0207 and 0215 was set up. In addition, a dedicated website (
https://galileo.safespace.sparc.space/(si apre in una nuova finestra)) was created to provide dedicated services related to Galileo navigation satellites.
Work package 5 (Evaluation and verification) was devoted to the evaluation and the verification of the accuracy of the SafeSpace service, to the evaluation of the final products and support services dedicated to Galileo satellites and to the evaluation of the SafeSpace modelling pipeline using virtual L5 mission observations.
The exploitation, dissemination, and communication (WP6) of the project activities and results to the scientific and user community ensured the increased visibility of SafeSpace and the maximum impact of the project activities and products. A range of communication tools, techniques, and activities appropriate for the different identified audiences has been deployed. We have designed and run outreach activities that acted as catalysers, motivating the public at different ages and education levels.
