Geoffrey D. Reeves (Space Science and Applications Group)
Keywords: Space Weather
Abstract:
How would the US respond to a clandestine attack that disabled one of our satellites? How would we know that it was an attack, not a natural failure? The goal of space weather programs as applied to space protection are simple: Provide a rapid and reliable assessment of the probability that satellite or system failure was caused by the space environment. Achieving that goal is not as simple. However, great strides are being made on a number of fronts. We will report on recent successes in providing rapid, automated anomaly/attack assessment for the penetrating radiation environment in the Earths radiation belts. We have previously reported on the Dynamic Radiation Environment Assimilation Model (DREAM) that was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory to assess hazards posed by the natural and by nuclear radiation belts. This year we will report on recent developments that are moving this program from the research, test, and evaluation phases to real-time implementation and application. We will discuss the challenges of leveraging space environment data sets for applications that are beyond the scope of mission requirements, the challenges of moving data from where they exist to where they are needed, the challenges of turning data into actionable information, and how those challenges were overcome. We will discuss the state-of-the-art as it exists in 2012 including the new capabilities that have been enabled and the limitations that still exist. We will also discuss how currently untapped data resources could advance the state-of-the-art and the future steps for implementing automatic real-time anomaly forensics.
Date of Conference: September 11-14, 2012
Track: Space Weather/Atmospherics