SPACE WEATHER AND EARLY DETECTION

Early detection and warning of potentially dangerous solar events is crucial for safeguarding our technological infrastructure and the safety of astronauts. One promising approach is to monitor from the fifth Lagrangian point (L5), which provides an early "side view" of the Sun. L5 is located 60 degrees behind Earth, as seen from the Sun, providing a short window of opportunity to process what it sees and predict the impact of dynamic solar weather on Earth’s environment. The VIGIL mission - currently in development by ESA - is planned for launch towards L5 in 2029 and will provide an unprecedented view of the Sun for space weather monitoring and scientific research.

Estimating the direction and propagation speed of coronal mass ejections is a difficult task and distance from L5 to Earth further imposes further challenges - limited computing power and low telemetry bandwidth. 

Deploying AI onboard the L5 solar observatory has great potential to address these shortcomings in a novel way, enabling near real-time space weather awareness. 

In 2022, FDL developed a ‘4D’ model of the full (4π steradians) Sun called ‘SPI3S ’, which utilised STEREO and SDO images to build a fully resolved model of the Sun, viewed from anywhere in the solar system. The SPI3S project provides the foundation to utilize data from heliospheric imagers to precisely track coronal mass ejections throughout the heliosphere. 

We envision developing an AI pipeline that can analyse data both onboard the spacecraft and from Earthbound observatories, significantly reducing downlink bandwidth requirements and alert latency. Such a new AI tool that could provide a novel approach to rapidly detect coronal mass ejections, study the underlying physics of solar eruptive events and determine more precisely their impact on Earth.