The Multiview Observatory for Solar Terrestrial Science (MOST)

Whitepaper #364 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: basic research. Additional topics: solar physics; space-based missions/projects; user-need-driven basic space weather research.

Whitepaper #023 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: basic research; infrastructure/workforce/other programmatic. Additional topics: solar physics; space-based missions/projects; research tools and infrastructure.

Whitepaper #062 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: space weather applications; basic research. Additional topics: space weather research/operations/research loop; ground-based missions/projects; solar physics; […]

Motivated by the Electronic Geophysical Year (eGY; www. egy.org), which is one of four international celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year which occurred in 1957–1958, the first ever conference devoted to Virtual Observatories in Geosciences (VOiG) was held in Denver, Colorado, USA between June 11 and 14, 2007. The conference was sponsored by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States Geological Survey (USGS), eGY, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and National Science Foundation (NSF), and was attended by 74 people from nine countries. Of the many contributed presentations from the conference, initially six were reviewed and selected to appear in this volume of Earth Science Informatics. These contributions are clustered under the broad discipline of space physics and largely sponsored by the innovative Virtual Observatories for Heliophysics Data program from the U.S. National Aeronautical and Space Administration. As is noted in all the contributed papers, the virtual observatory paradigm which was originated in the astronomy and astrophysics community, was quickly adopted into solar physics and space physics. More recently, other fields such as environmental science, aeronomy, oceanography, seismology, volcanology, hydrology, and ecology are embracing the paradigm to serve their diverse community needs. The papers represent an excellent cross-section of the developments that have taken place for solar and space physics virtual observatories, and the needs that have emerged and the developed solutions. Modern data frameworks involve multi-tiered architecture (King et al.) and the new virtual observatories are no exception. Deciding on topologies for how best to update loose federations of VOs so that accuracy, currency, relevance and scalability are satisfied is one of the present challenges. How do virtual observatories communicate their holdings to each other? For space physics, the Developing a Space Physics Archive Search and Extract (SPASE) Query Language contribution (Narock et al.) indicates how a community vocabulary, and existing standards developed in the astronomy community, are being brought together to solve the exchange problem in three space physics virtual observatories. In contrasting the differences between astronomical VO needs and those of solar and space physics (Harvey et al.), another contribution lays out the categories of VO participants and their characteristics which drive the interoperability needs of VOs and in particular, the development of the aforementioned, community-based SPASE effort. The practical implementation of the SPASE vocabulary (Merka et al.) in a modern data framework setting, so that users can query and access interdisciplinary data sources via distributed searches from both web portals and web services, demonstrates the substantial and science-relevant application of virtual observatories to space science. In assessing the relevance of searches returned from the “Brave New World” of VOs being implemented (King et al.), it is clear that while some of the techniques for ranking used in general internet searches apply, many do not, and new scoring methods are required, in addition to the importance of faceted search, in order to lead the user to the accurate source of information. The paper on the Virtual Earth–Sun Observatory describes Earth Sci Inform (2008) 1:3–4 DOI 10.1007/s12145-008-0001-8

Whitepaper #006 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: basic research; infrastructure/workforce/other programmatic. Additional topics: other programmatic; state of the profession; inner heliosphere.

Whitepaper #262 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: space weather applications; basic research. Additional topics: planetary magnetospheres; planetary ionospheres / upper atmospheres; other space weather; space-based […]

Whitepaper #333 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: space weather applications; basic research. Additional topics: space weather research/operations/research loop; space weather research/applications/operations pipeline; […]

Whitepaper #351 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: basic research. Additional topics: planetary ionospheres / upper atmospheres; space-based missions/projects.

Whitepaper #192 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: basic research; infrastructure/workforce/other programmatic. Additional topics: ground-based missions/projects; state of the profession; laboratory space plasma physics; […]

Whitepaper #154 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: space weather applications; infrastructure/workforce/other programmatic. Additional topics: space weather research/operations/research loop; space weather […]

Whitepaper #234 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: space weather applications; basic research. Additional topics: space weather research/operations/research loop; inner heliosphere; space-based missions/projects; […]

Whitepaper #036 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: space weather applications. Additional topics: space weather research/operations/research loop; space-based missions/projects; space weather [...]

Whitepaper #251 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: infrastructure/workforce/other programmatic. Additional topics: other programmatic; space-based missions/projects.

Whitepaper #177 in the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. Main topics: basic research; infrastructure/workforce/other programmatic. Additional topics: ground-based missions/projects; system science; research tools and infrastructure.

Space weather is expected to be an important part of the new decadal survey of solar and space physics, currently set for release in 2012. This is appropriate—ever more detailed knowledge, modeling, and predictability of the Sun-Earth system are required. Every 10 years, scientists in several different space-related research subjects (e.g., astronomy, solar and space physics, planetary and Earth sciences) convene to assess the progress of their field over the previous decade and to recommend research areas for the coming decade. Organized by the U.S. National Academies, these surveys set the tone for national priorities in a given subject. The first decadal survey for solar and space physics, The Sun to the Earth–and Beyond (National Academies Press), was released in 2003, devoted an important chapter to space weather effects on technologies, and included recommendations for research needs as well as for policy understandings. The new survey will likely highlight new vulnerabilities stemming from the many technological advances of the past decade. For example, the deployment of wireless communications has increased exponentially around the world, and these communications can be susceptible to ionospheric disturbances and solar X-rays and radio noise. The continued growth of Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies for many societal functions—including laying out sewer pipes and electricity cables as well as for navigation, air traffic control, and guiding ships to port—means that subtle effects of the ionosphere on these satellite-transmitted signals must be addressed to achieve high spatial accuracy. A huge surprise in the past decade was confirmation that large solar radio bursts can produce complete outages of GPS reception over extensive geographical areas. Thus, a major continuing research challenge is to predict the amplitude and spectra of radio noise and X-ray fluxes that might be expected from a solar flare before an active region erupts. Such predictability remains far in the future; this is a frontier research area, and it is hoped that the new decadal survey will address among its recommendations pathways to achieve more predictability on this topic. Additionally and unfortunately, many policy issues identified in the first survey remain unresolved to date. One of these continues to be defining the relationships between government agencies and commercial enterprises to “optimize the benefits of the national investments, public and private” (The Sun to the Earth–and Beyond, p. 16). Another involves the definition and execution of a “verification and validation program for all publicly funded models and system-impact products before they become operational” (p. 14). I hope that the new survey will provide recommendations on how to accomplish these goals. Daniel Baker, a professor at University of Colorado and a member of the Space Weather advisory board, has agreed to serve as chair of this new decadal survey. Principal sponsors of the survey include NASA, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and NOAA, all of which have important objectives and commitments to basic understanding of the solar-terrestrial system and its impacts on ground- and space-based technologies. The new decadal survey provides a real opportunity to define the frontiers of measurements, models, theory, and policy for space weather applications. I look forward to its deliberations, conclusions, and recommendations. Louis J. Lanzerotti is editor of Space Weather and a distinguished research professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology, in Newark. He served as chair of the first decadal survey in solar and space physics.