Title:

Space Weather Follow On Mission

The sun produces “space weather” (magnetic fields) which can potentially harm power grids, disrupt communications, and block navigation systems like the GPS. Any industries which rely on these technologies can be impacted. Space Weather Follow-On, or SWFO, will be a NOAA environmental satellite used to monitor the sun's activity. SWFO and adjoining satellite GOES-U, will be used as sentinels whose observations will reduce the response time to harmful space weather events from our sun, such as coronal mass ejections. Here, we present ground software for the magnetometer on-board the SWFO. Ground software is the software that deals with the data and measurement conversions. The magnetometer is one of a suite of instruments used to measure the solar wind and the magnetic field originating from the sun. Our software converts raw data from the satellite into a timestamped series of measurements of the magnetic field. The conversions comprise data cleaning and coordinate conversions. Then our software is paired with flight software onboard SWFO that integrates, encodes, and transmits instrument readings back to Earth. The final dataset is important as calibration data for the instruments onboard the spacecraft, input for computer models, and for real-time forecasting of space weather.

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