European Space Operations Centre

About: European Space Operations Centre is a government organization based out in Darmstadt, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Orbit determination & Satellite. The organization has 309 authors who have published 331 publications receiving 10399 citations. The organization is also known as: ESOC.

Summary of the plenary sessions at European Space Weather Week 15: space weather users and service providers working together now and in the future

Abstract: During European Space Weather Week 15 two plenary sessions were held to review the status of operational space weather forecasting. The first session addressed the topic of working with space weather service providers now and in the future, the user perspective. The second session provided the service perspective, addressing experiences in forecasting development and operations. Presentations in both sessions provided an overview of international efforts on these topics, and panel discussion topics arising in the first session were used as a basis for panel discussion in the second session. Discussion topics included experiences during the September 2017 space weather events, cross domain impacts, timeliness of notifications, and provision of effective user education. Users highlighted that a severe space weather event did not necessarily lead to severe impacts for each individual user across the different sectors. Service providers were generally confident that timely and reliable information could be provided during severe and extreme events, although stressed that more research and funding were required in this relatively new field of operational space weather forecasting, to ensure continuation of capabilities and further development of services, in particular improved forecasting targeting user needs. Here a summary of the sessions is provided followed by a commentary on the current state-of-the-art and potential next steps towards improvement of services.

Continuous Plan Management Support for Space Missions: the RAXEM Case

Abstract: This paper describes RAXEM, an AI-based system developed to support human mission planners in the daily task to plan uplink commands for an interplanetary spacecraft. The intelligent environment of RAXEM has been designed to support the users in analyzing the problem and taking planning decisions as a result of an interactive process. The system combines different ingredients like integrating flexible automated algorithms, promoting user active participation during problem solving, and guaranteeing continuity of work practice. The paper touches upon all these aspects and comments on how a key factor for success has been the integration of intelligent technology to continuously support mission plan management.

On the retrieval of surface radiation budget components from satellites

Abstract: The retrieval of the surface radiation budget components in both the solar (0.3–4 μm) and longwave (4–100 μm) parts of the spectrum is discussed. A close linear coupling between the solar radiation field observed by the satellite and the surface radiation field facilitates the retrieval for solar radiation. Simple equations for a retrieval of the downwelling solar irradiance, the surface albedo and the net solar flux can be derived from the local solar radiative energy budget of the atmosphere-surface system. Generally the solar retrievals are advanced and provide useful results for climatological studies. In the longwave the satellite estimates are more difficult since the downwelling longwave irradiance at the Earth's surface is largely decoupled from the radiation field at the top of the atmosphere. The clear-sky longwave irradiance is basically determined by the near-surface temperature and humidity field. Clouds with low bases are very effective for increasing the downward longwave flux.