Space Weather Laboratory
Space Weather Laboratory
The Space Weather Laboratory’s (SWL) mission is to perform research and analysis of the coupled Sun-Earth system.
Specifically, the SWL undertakes space-based, ground-based, theoretical, and modeling studies of the causal chain of events that lead to space weather effects of interest to NASA, other US government agencies and the general public. For this purpose, SWL maintains a world-class space environment research program. Furthermore, SWL maintains leadership roles in the development of electric and magnetic field instrumentation, of ultra-violet imaging instrumentation, and of space environment theories and models. SWL activities are pursued through partnerships with national and international organizations. SWL communicates NASA research results to the scientific community, to various space weather interests, and to the general public. SWL staff lead the development of space environment missions and provide Project Scientists for NASA flight missions with space weather applications. The SWL supports strategic planning activities at NASA and other government agencies.
ONGOING PROJECTS
- Community Coordinated Modeling Center
- Multi-agency partnership to enable and support the next generation space science and space weather models
- Sounding Rockets
- Focused, scientific exploration for geosphere, solar, and astronomy investigations
OPERATING MISSIONS
- FAST
- Fast Auroral Snapshot Explorer
- GEOTAIL
- Studying the dynamics of the Earth's magnetosphere over a wide range of distances
- POLAR
- Unlocking the secrets of Earth's magnetosphere
- Space Technology 5 (ST5)
- A mission to identify, develop, build and test innovative technologies and concepts for use in future missions
- TIMED
- A mission to explore one of the last frontiers in Earth's atmosphere
- WIND
- A spin-stabilized spacecraft developed to study the dynamics of the solar wind, intrinsically, and in support of magnetospheric studies
- C/NOFS
- Communication/ Navigation Outage Forecasting System
- THEMIS
- Tracking substorms and their evolution
FEATURED MISSION
- STEREO
- STEREO will use stereoscopic (3-D) vision to construct a global picture of the Sun and its influences.
MISSIONS IN FORMULATION
- MMS
- Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission
- RBSP
- Quantifying the processes that generate and remove particles from the radiation belts
- UV and Visible Imaging
- Ultraviolet and Visible imaging of Geospace to enable and support scientific understanding of the impacts of solar influences on Earth's upper atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetosphere
- Firefly
- An NSF-sponsored nanosatellite to study Earth's most powerful natural particle accelerator-lightning-and the powerful bursts of radiation it sends into near-Earth space.
