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12/1/2005 12:01:00 AM

Rice’s space-weather technology has far-reaching impact

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

For all their violence and fury, earthly storms like Hurricane Katrina are not the largest storms known to science. Mars is afflicted with duststorms that occasionally cover most of the planet, and Jupiter’s famed red spot is a cyclone larger than Earth. Yet even these pale in comparison with the biggest tempests — the silent, ethereal, invisible stormfronts that emanate from the sun.

Courtesy photo

Rice University has long been a leader in studying space storms, particularly their interactions with Earth’s magnetic field. That work continues today, as Rice scientists try to develop the first integrated space-weather computer model capable of simulating space-weather systems from their origins on the surface of the sun to their impacts on the people of Earth.

Rice University has long been a leader in studying space storms, particularly their interactions with Earth’s magnetic field. That work continues today, as Rice scientists work with more than a dozen research groups across the country to develop the first integrated space-weather computer model that’s capable of simulating space-weather systems from their origins on the surface of the sun to their impacts on the people of Earth.

Rice is also extending its reach beyond terrestrial electromagnetic effects to the study of the sun itself. Researchers will participate in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) — two observatories, to be launched next spring, that will monitor the sun in tandem, giving scientists new clues to the fundamental nature and origin of coronal mass ejections — the most energetic eruptions on the sun and the primary cause of the most destructive space storms.

Space weather explained

Scientists discovered space weather in 1958 when instruments aboard satellites reported a surprising find: the space beyond Earth’s atmosphere wasn’t empty. It was filled with high-energy radiation, particles that spewed constantly from the sun, forming a high-energy ‘solar wind.’ Blowing from the sun into surrounding space at more than one million miles per hour, the solar wind is actually an ultrathin plasma, a soup of protons and electrons numbering just a few per cubic centimeter.

Space storms form when these particles enter Earth’s magnetic field, a massive energy field that emanates from the planet’s swirling iron core. Earth’s force creates a magnetic field so powerful it holds sway over energetic particles located more than 100,000 miles away. The region of space where Earth’s field holds dominance over the solar influence is known as “the magnetosphere.”

Rice’s space weather history

Rice was one of the first U.S. universities to establish a space science program, and it was also among the first to study space weather. Rice scientists built two separate instrument packages that Apollo astronauts placed on the moon to monitor solar wind and the magnetosphere, and Rice pioneered the use of computer programs that simulated what happened when high-energy particles from the sun slammed into the magnetosphere.

The first of these, the Rice Convection Model, was developed by professor emeritus Richard Wolf and others during the 1970s. These same researchers were joined by professor emeritus John Freeman to develop the Magnetospheric Specification Model (MSM), the first numerical computer model used by the government to generate space-weather reports at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo.

The successor to MSM, the Magnetospheric Specification and Forecast Model (MSFM), went a step further by adding predictive capabilities. MSFM, which was recently put into operation by the U.S. Air Force, uses data from both ground-based sensors and space-based solar observatories to give advance warning of solar storms that could be powerful enough to cripple satellites, disrupt terrestrial power grids and endanger astronauts in space.

Putting the pieces together

In 2002 Rice and six other universities won a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish a broad-ranging program aimed at combining a half-dozen computer models — like Rice’s magnetospheric models — developed to simulate specific elements of space weather. The Center for Integrated Space-Weather Modeling (CISM) is headquartered at Boston University.

“Ultimately, CISM hopes to develop one ‘sun-to-Earth’ model that can tell us what’s happening at every stage of a space-weather event, from the corona of the sun, through the solar wind and magnetosphere and even into Earth’s atmosphere,” said Frank Toffoletto, associate professor of physics and astronomy and Rice’s lead investigator on the CISM project.

Toffoletto said the initial results from CISM’s first-generation model were published in a series of 22 research papers last fall. The model is still undergoing validation and testing, and the center has just proposed that NSF provide five years of additional funding to refine the model. For more information, see <www.bu.edu/cism>.

Both eyes on the sun

The latest efforts of solar researchers at Rice could provide new clues about coronal mass ejections (CMEs), violent eruptions from the sun that lead to some of the most damaging space storms.

Graduate and undergraduate students in the laboratory of David Alexander, the Andrew Hays Buchanan Associate Professor of Astrophysics and associate professor of physics and astronomy, are working on new simulations and data analysis software slated for use in NASA’s STEREO project.

Slated for launch next spring, STEREO comprises two identical solar observatories. One will fly ahead of Earth and one will lag behind. Together, they will give scientists a stereoscopic look at the solar atmosphere.

Alexander said researchers are particularly interested in CMEs, enormous eruptions of high-energy particles that can travel up to seven times faster than a standard solar wind.

“The main focus of STEREO is to understand Earth-directed solar storms and the conditions leading up to them,” he said. “Our students are directly involved in preparing for the mission, and they’ll take an active role in analyzing the data. We’re already working with the NASA/Jet Propulsion Lab to produce 3-D stereo visualizations and tools that can be used when data begins to arrive.”

Reaching out

All of Rice’s space-weather programs, from CISM to STEREO, have strong public outreach components. Alexander is heavily involved in NASA’s Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum, and CISM helped sponsor a radio course under Rice’s Master of Science Teaching Program. The Rice Space Institute’s (RSI) planetarium show “Force 5” was co-developed with the Houston Museum of Natural Science and featured space storms, as well as hurricanes and tornadoes. This show introduces thousands of school children and adults nationwide to the concepts of space weather.

Those interested in tracking the latest space-weather forecasts can follow them via the RSI Web site, <http://space.rice.edu/ISTP/dials.html>, or sign up for e-mail alerts at <spacalrt-subscribe@mailman.rice.edu>.

The institute’s new 2006 edition of its annual educational CD-ROM, titled “Space Weather,” is also now available. It is free, thanks to NASA and NSF support. The CD is available at the RSI office, 202 Herman Brown Hall.