ILWS News

Announcement: Comparative Heliophysics Summer Program: "Solar-stellar connections, space-weather impacts at terrestrial planets, and small-science instrumentation"
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California
June 6 - July 1, 2016
Proposal Deadline: March 14, 2016
More information

 

2016 ILWS Science Workshop: Science for Space Weather
23-29 January 2016, Goa, India

Please join us for the 2016 ILWS Science Workshop! All members of the space weather research community are welcome. 
Workshop Website
Workshop presentations

 

Congratulations to the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission team on a successful launch!
  • MMS Launched on March 12, 2015 and the constellation of four spacecraft are all performing well. Each of the MMS spacecraft is equipped with a suite of instruments that are designed to study fundamental processes in the Earth's magnetosphere, including turbulence and reconnection.  MMS Website

 

  • DSCOVR Mission Launches
    The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) contains several instruments that will perform vital solar wind measurements from the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point. This highly anticipated mission is planned to operate for at least five years. DISCOVR Website

     
  • Update: Space Weather Roadmap is now available! 
    The ILWS/COSPAR Space Weather Roadmap is freely available to all who are interested. Please share and enjoy!  Roadmap Website

     
  • Space Weather Roadmap is taking shape
    At the 2012 COSPAR general assembly in Mysore, the ILWS Steering Committee and COSPAR Panel on Space Weather proposed the establishment of a Space Weather roadmap. The roadmap "Understanding Space Weather to Shield Society," whose objective is to identify key areas of research leading to a demonstrable improvement in service provision capability in the short, medium and longer term, is now being finalised. The executive summary is available.

    The Space Weather roadmap study group is led by Dr. C. Schrijver (Lockheed Martin, USA) and Dr. K. Kauristie (Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland). The full report is expected to be published early 2015 in Advances in Space Research. In the meantime, additional information and the list of contributors to the report is available at http://www.lmsal.com/~schryver/COSPARrm/
  • ILWS celebrates the successful launch of the Enhanced Polar Outflow Probe (e-POP)payload on September 30, 2013. e-POP will return valuable information on space weather storms and upper atmospheric plasma outflows. All 8 experiments have completed checkout and are anticipating exciting new science data. Congratulations, e-POP team!

     
  • Congratulations to the organizers of the ILWS 2013 Science Workshop in Irkutsk, Russia. Over 100 scientists attended the conference and the presentations covered a wide range of science topics. Please see a brief  Workshop Summary for conclusions from the workshop. 

     

  • Abstract submission is now open for the 2013 ILWS Science Workshop "Space Weather Research with Space and Ground-based Observations" to be held June 24-28, 2013 in Irkutsk, Russia. The Organizing Committee has been hard at work attracting an exciting array of speakers for the meeting, and all members of the ILWS science community are invited to attend.
    Please see  http://cs.iszf.irk.ru/index.php/ilws/13 for full conference information.  

    Download the Conference Flyer (PDF).

     

    Image of ILWS Tenth Anniversary

    Yes, it's been ten years already, and it's time for the ILWS Tenth Anniversary Symposium and Celebration!!  The event was held February 12-14, 2013 in Vienna, Austria, in conjunction with the 2013 ILWS Working Group meeting. The Tenth Anniversary Celebration website describes the events and presentations made by the working group.  
    News item on the events


     
  • The date and location for the 2013 ILWS Science Workshop have been chosen! The workshop will take place June 24-28, 2013 in Irkutsk, Russia and will be hosted by the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This is a continuation of our community workshop series, which includes the 2011 ILWS Science Workshop held in Beijing, China, and the 2009 ILWS Science Workshopheld in Ubatuba, Brazil.  All are welcome to attend. 
  • Please see the meeting website:  http://cs.iszf.irk.ru/index.php/ilws/13
     
  The NASA Living With a Star mission Radiation Belt Storm Probes was successfully launched on August 30, 2012. The mission is functioning well, and will return valuable data on the nature of the Earth's radiation belts. Congratulations, RBSP team!

 

  • There will be a special session on ILWS missions at the 39th COSPAR Scientific Assembly to be held July 14 - 22 in Mysore, India.  Scientific Event D2.6 "Future Out-of-Ecliptic and In Situ Observations of the Sun and Solar Wind" will feature many ILWS missions and scientific results.  The abstract deadline is February 10, 2012.  We hope you will consider participating in the session. 

     

  • ESA has selected the ILWS mission Solar Orbiter for implementation! The planned launch date is 2017 on a NASA-provided vehicle. Solar Orbiter will venture closer to the Sun (0.28 AU) than any other mission, and will carry a suite of instruments to study the Sun and solar wind provided by NASA and ESA. (4 October 2011)
     
  • The 2011 ILWS Science Workshop, "Towards the next Solar Maximum," was held August 28 - September 1, 2011 at the Friendship Hotel in Beijing, China. Presentations are available here

     

  • ILWS Welcomes the Romanian Space Agency! 
    The Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) is the most recent organization to join ILWS. Dr. Dumitru HASEGAN, the Head of the Space Exploration Program at ROSA and the Director of the Institute for Space Sciences, will serve as the ROSA Delegate to ILWS.

     

  • An editorial on space weather titled "How's the Weather" by Dan Baker and Lika Guhathakurta was published in the June 17, 2011 issue of the New York Times. The editorial discusses the linkage between space weather forecasters, researchers, and society. 

     

  •   The book "The Sun, The Earth, and Near Earth Space: A Guide to the Sun-Earth System" is now available for download.

     

  • The first launch of 2011 brought the Russian Federal Space Agency's Elektro-L mission to orbit. A Zenit-2SB rocket launched from Kazakhstan and carried the new mission to space at 21:28 GMT on January 20, 2011. Elektro-L is a weather satellite that will perform several important space weather measurements. Congratulations on a successful launch!

     

    graphical representation of the Elektro-L mission
  • Two science items from the Living With a Star program made it into Discover Magazine's top 100 stories of 2010: 

     

     

  •   The National Research Council's "Severe Space Weather Events" report is available online in both PDF and printed format.

     

  • Special ILWS news release: "Space Weather turns into an International Problem". NASA Science News is featuring an article on ILWS activities and international space weather research, including interviews with ILWS delegates!
    • The PICARD Mission  was successfully launched on June 15, 2010.PICARD is a mission to study spectral and total solar irradiance, topics that are very important to ILWS.
      Congratulations to the PICARD team!

       

    graphical representation of the PICARD mission

     
  • New Workshop: "Advanced Computational Capabilities for Exploration in Heliophysical Science" (ACCEHS), August 16 -18, 2010 at the NCAR Mesa Lab in Boulder, Colorado in the USA. Working Groups will address needs and opportunities in (1) Solar (2) Interplanetary (3) Magnetosphere (4) Ionosphere-Thermosphere, and (5) Advanced Computation topics.

  • The 2010 ILWS Working Group meeting will be held July 15 - 17, 2010 in Bremen Germany. Working group meetings are for ILWS delegates and task group members only; we are planning a science workshop in 2011 that will be open to the entire research community. 
    2010 ILWS Working Group meeting information and presentations from the meeting

graphical representation of the SDO mission
 
  • Congratulations to ESA on the successful launch of the Proba2 Mission on November 2, 2009. The Proba-2 Science Center allows access to the science data and summary data.
graphical representation of the PROBA-2 mission
 
Cover image of Heliophysics Textbook 111 Textbooks from the NASA Heliophysics Summer Schools, which was 
sponsored by the Living With a Star program, are now available. These are the first textbooks explicitly addressing all aspects of heliophysics. They were produced by the faculty of the 2007, 2008, and 2009 Heliophysics Summer Schools. All three volumes are available from http://www.vsp.ucar.edu/HeliophysicsScience/resources/textbooks.html

 

image of book cover A book on the International Heliophysical Year's activities has been published. The volume, titled "Putting the 'I' in IHY", consists of 370 pages describing IHY's science, outreach, and observatory development activities in more than 70 nations. It is available for purchase from amazon.com.
  • The Indian Institute of Astrophysics is organizing the 1st Asia-Pacific School to be held December 10-22, 2007 at Kodaikanal Observatory in India. 
    Applications are now being accepted for the 1st Asia-Pacific Summer School. This international school offers an intensive two weeks course in topics related to heliophysics. The course is aimed at Ph.D. and post-doctoral research students. 
  • ILWS Working Group Meeting, COSPAR: Beijing, China
    July 22-23, 2006
    The 4th ILWS General Meeting Agenda , Multifunctional Hall, Building 1,
    Friendship Hotel, Beijing
  • ILWS Session (Sessions D2.1/E3.1 on Wednesday and Thursday) at COSPAR Beijing, China - 16-23 July 2006
  • ILWS Session (Union Session 1) at the Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting, Beijing, China - 24-27 July 2006
  • ILWS supports the forthcoming International Symposium on Recent Observations and Simulations of the Sun-Earth System (ISROSES) conference in Varna, Bulgaria from September 18-22, 2006. Symposia will include: solar cycle variations, the response of geospace to solar wind variations, CMEs, energetic particles, and modeling / prediction.For more information, see:
    http://dezeeuwg4.engin.umich.edu/~ilr/ISROSES/home.php
  • ILWS meeting held at the premises of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency/Aeronautics and Space in A-1010 Vienna, Canovagasse 7 on April 23 and 24, 2005. The steering committee meeting was on April 23, the working group meeting on April 24. Meeting Agenda Contact William Liu or David Sibeck 
    for further details about the meeting. Local contact information for the Research Promotion Agency include: 
  • ISSI Workshop - Solar Dynamics and its Effects on the Heliosphere and Earth, Bern, Switzerland, 18-22 April 2005

    **Please note: Attendance at this workshop is by invitation only.
    http://www.issi.unibe.ch/workshops/SolDyn/

  • A special session entitled "International Living with a Star Program" took place during the 35th COSPAR Scientific Assembly in Paris, France, 18 - 25 July 2004
  • An ILWS Steering Committee was held on May 23, 2004. 
    The ILWS Working Groups met on May 25-26, 2004.
    Both meetings were held in Banff, Canada. 
  • Double Star Launched
  • The first ILWS Working Group meeting was held in Nice, France, April 13-15, 2003 - Meeting Agenda
  • The first meeting of the ILWS Steering Committee was held in Paris, France, January 16-17, 2003
  • ILWS Kickoff Meeting held 4-6 September 2002, Washington, D.C. (29 attendees - 27 agencies invited)