Near Earth Phenomenology - the Impacts of Space Weather on our Lives
AER's Space Weather and Effects Division has been modeling and generating data products along side scientists at the Air Force's primary research center, AFRL, for decades. Over the years, our staff has contributed to the development and maintenance of state-of-the-art environmental models to provide space weather specification and prediction. Our scientists have contributed to the advancement of atmospheric density and composition models; thermosphere/ionosphere interaction; and solar/magnetosphere coupling for use in the next generation space weather specification. Our knowledge of near-Earth phenomenology and its impact on civilian and defense system provides the necessary information for space operations.
Through our involvement in key programs such as the Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS), Scintillation Network Decision Aid (SCINDA), Operation Space Environment Display (OpSEND), and Modified Atmospheric Density Model (MADM), AER scientists have been involved in leading edge advances in these growing fields. Our development of the AFRL C/NOFS Data Center has provided a design and operational implementation for data processing and modeling in support of the next generation military utility decision aid. Our scientists and engineers have contributed to the development of the ground station software, data processing, and modeling to provide an environmental effects fusion system for impact product generation.
What began as an Air Force situational awareness tool for the space weather community has evolved into a tool used during spacecraft design and development, as well as, sensor specification definition. Our modeling support combined with the implementation of new data sources have resulted in new forecasting techniques with the capability to identify, model, assess, and predict space weather impacts on civilian and defense systems. These improved space weather depiction and phenomenology prediction have provided the evolving space community with the necessary planning information to mitigate system failure.
Our Expert: Nelson Bonito