HR: 14:20h
AN: SH53C-03 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Operational Support Issues for the new NASA Exploration Initiative
AU: * Kunches, J
EM: joseph.kunches@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA Space Environment Center, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305-3337
AU: Balch, C
EM: christopher.balch@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA Space Environment Center, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305-3337
AU: Murtagh, W
EM: william.murtagh@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA Space Environment Center, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305-3337
AB: The recent proposal for NASA to fly astronauts to the Moon and Mars is both very exciting and, at the same time, daunting. Any flight away from the protection of the Earth's magnetic field poses special problems for space weather operational support providers such as NOAA's Space Environment Center. Since the Apollo flights in the 1960's, SEC has provided forecasts and warnings of important space weather to NASA at Johnson Space Center. The NASA Space Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG) receives SEC products and services to aid them in their function of safeguarding the astronaut's health and safety. But to travel away from the Geo-magnetosphere and then the Sun-Earth line, new services will be necessary to insure the warning of imminent solar energetic particle (SEP) events, a severe threat to astronaut safety. Currently SEP forecasts are marginally accurate and must be improved. These SEP add to perhaps the most serious threat to safety, the constant bombardment of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR). Fortunately, the GCR behavior, though variable, is well understood. The presentation will consist first of a status report on the state of the predictive art for the near-Earth environment. That report will include both data and models currently used at SEC, as well as prediction verification statistics. Following that, there will be a look into future time on issues related to a lunar flight and a stay on the moon. Lastly some thoughts will be given on what may be required to provide adequate operational support for a flight to and from, and habitation on Mars.
DE: 7800 SPACE PLASMA PHYSICS
DE: 7899 General or miscellaneous
DE: 2100 INTERPLANETARY PHYSICS
DE: 2104 Cosmic rays
SC: SPA-Solar and Heliospheric Physics [SH]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting