GEOSHAFT Pilot Space Weather Service

David Rodgers, Karen Ford and Keith Ryden, QinetiQ, Farnborough, UK

SW Week 2005: ESTEC, Noordwijk

Internal dielectric charging (IDC) ranks highly among environmental hazards to geostationary satellites.

Aim is to provide space radiation threat information for use in real-time planning and post-event anomaly analysis.

Intended Products:

– Running 24hr averages of >2MeV electron flux

– Charging currents through the shielding around sensitive equipment

– Maximum electric field in sensitive componentsDelivery:

– Hazard levels on html and alerts by e-mail

– User control of alert levels, shielding and material properties

GEOSHAFT Objectives1

3

GEOSHAFT User Needs

One external user (New Skies) participated in UR phase

Trial version of service was used to generate UR feedback

Main requirements:• Anomaly diagnostic information

• Short-term forecasting, up to 24-hours

• Clear information delivery

• Easily accessible using common software

• Robust against data errors and outages

• Quality flag

• User customisability

2

4GEOSHAFT Service evaluationWeb ‘hits’ ~ 5/day (excluding search engines)

New Skies and Paradigm participated in evaluation

Cost of anomalies

• engineering time dealing with space weather anomalies (of order £20-40k)– New Skies - 1½ months of engineer effort per year for the 5 spacecraft– Paradigm - 3 months of engineer effort per year for fleet

• disruption to service: – New Skies - < 6 or 7 mins not serious, but >10-15 mins a problem

• documentation for insurance (typically 2%/year premium)

Value of existing GEOSHAFT to users (~ zero)

• New Skies – no internal charging anomalies

• Paradigm – mature fleet, no new anomalies, interest in longer-term forecasts for operations

• No value in having European space weather capability per se

• Nevertheless an improved service would have value

3

5GEOSHAFT Business planBased on an improved service

Market

• ~ 320 geostationary satellites, ~ 60 systems, 6 multiple European systems

Costs £

Funding models

• Subscription £5k/u/yr

• Public service £77k over 3 years

Comparisons

• NOAA SEC, NASA’s ‘SpaceWeather.com’, IPS in Australia, BAS SatRisk and IRF Lund are non-subscription, also SPENVIS currently.

• Satellite Users Interference Reduction Group ~ $15k/u/yr

Set-up Recur. Data Business Market. Total

In-house 35k 16k 0 .5k /u/yr 12k 99.5k

Hosted 31k 16k 0 .5k /u/yr 6k 101.5k

Joint 33k 10k 0 .25k/u/yr 6k 80.25k

4

6

GEOSHAFT Prospective improvements• Without changes the existing service is too limited

• New requirements– Local time mapping– Multiple satellites visible at once– Easier customisation of shielding, no fields– Automated anomaly comparisons

• Being part of global service makes sense financially and practically for users

• New Data sources– Higher spectral resolution for better internal charging calculations feasible– More GEO monitors would improve predictions and local time mapping– Extension to MEO

• New, sophisticated detectors on GSTB/Galileo • Galileo creates a major new user• Europe could become the principal provider of MEO spacecraft hazard

information.

5