Welcome to the Space Safety Service page of SafeSpace, a Horizon 2020 scientific research programme.
Our goal is to produce a prototype service dedicated to adverse space weather events impacting near-Earth space and threatening space-borne assets.
User’s Guide
Home page
The SafeSpace service provides an overview of the past, current and
predicted space weather conditions, for an overall extent of 6 days (1 day to
the past, current and 4 days ahead prediction). The overview is provided for 3
specific orbits (LEO, MEO and GEO) in a simplified view of colored bars
which show:
1. the daily mean of the electron flux (left y-axis of the bar chart) and,
2. the percentage of historical daily flux values that exceed the user
defined thresholds (right y-axis of the bar chart).
The color of the bar-charts is defined as follows:
1.
Green: the average daily flux corresponds to
quiet or low
conditions
2.
Yellow: the average daily flux corresponds to
moderate
conditions
3.
Red: the average daily flux corresponds to
extreme conditions
The
low / moderate / extreme conditions refer to internal charging effects
only, and are characterised using thresholds which have been defined in the
basis of long-term (over 2 Solar cycles) in situ data for each orbit
separately as follows:
1.
GEO: >0.8 MeV electron flux from GOES satellites
2.
GNSS/MEO: >0.8 MeV electron flux from GPS satellites
3.
LEO: >1.2 MeV electron flux from POES satellites
From each dataset (for each orbit), the Cumulative Distribution Function
(CDF) has been calculated and the 2% and 20% daily flux values are
defined:
1. If a predicted flux is below the 20% threshold (lower threshold) then
the conditions are quiet and the color of the bar chart is green.
2. If a predicted flux is above the 2% threshold (upper threshold) then
the conditions are extreme and the color of the bar chart is red.
3. Finally, everything between the two thresholds are defined as
moderate conditions and the color of the bar chart is yellow.
A user, as long as he/she has already registered in the service, can change
the above-mentioned thresholds in order to meet their needs. This can be
achieved by clicking in the “Set Thresholds” button which can be found in
each orbit. The new user-defined thresholds can be given either as
percentages or as absolute daily flux values. Note that in the case of
absolute daily flux values, the user must give values that correspond to
>0.8 MeV electrons at GEO and GNSS/MEO, while to >1.2 MeV electrons at
LEO.
Cumulative Distribution Function
By clicking at the “View Cumulative Distribution Function” button, which can
be found at each orbit, a user can have an overview of the statistical
distribution (CDF) of electron flux. At this second level page, the user can
have information – except for the daily mean electron flux – about the
distribution of the daily electron flux in terms of median (black star) and
quantiles (green and red corresponding to 25th-75th and 5th-95th percentile
range, respectively). The distribution of the daily flux is over-plotted on the
historical CDF and the background plot color is defined by the same
thresholds that the user has provided. The distribution of the daily flux is
presented separately for each of the 6 days using the slide show at the
second level page. Finally, the user is able to download the full distribution of
the daily electron flux by clicking in the “Download the orbit's flux
values” button, which is located at the down left side of the second level page.
Historical Data
By clicking the “Historical Data” button, the user can have information about the
historical in situ data for each orbit in order to compare the service predictions
with past space weather conditions. The plot shows the daily flux for the past two weeks characterised by the already user-defined thresholds.
Acknowledgements
The Cumulative Distribution Functions (CDFs) for each orbit have been
generated by Antoine Brunet, Nourallah Dahmen and Sebastien Bourdarie.
The software for the generation of the service plots has been developed by
Ingmar Sandberg, Constantinos Papadimitriou and Christos Katsavrias. The
service website has been developed by Stefanos Doulfis, Christos Katsavrias,
Afroditi Nasi and Ioannis A. Daglis.