The Space Weather and Ultraviolet Solar Variability (SWUSV) Microsatellite Mission

• Main Authors: Luc Damé, Mustapha Meftah, Alain Hauchecorne, Philippe Keckhut, Alain Sarkissian, Marion Marchand, Abdenour Irbah, Éric Quémerais, Slimane Bekki, Thomas Foujols, Matthieu Kretzschmar, Gaël Cessateur, Alexander Shapiro, Werner Schmutz, Sergey Kuzin, Vladimir Slemzin, Alexander Urnov, Sergey Bogachev, José Merayo, Peter Brauer, Kanaris Tsinganos, Antonis Paschalis, Ayman Mahrous, Safinaz Khaled, Ahmed Ghitas, Besheir Marzouk, Amal Zaki, Ahmed A. Hady, Rangaiah Kariyappa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2013-05-01
• Series: Journal of Advanced Research
• Subjects: Solar eruptions; Coronal mass ejections; Space weather; Ultraviolet variability; Ultraviolet instrumentation; Solar irradiance
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2090123213000337

We present the ambitions of the SWUSV (Space Weather and Ultraviolet Solar Variability) Microsatellite Mission that encompasses three major scientific objectives: (1) Space Weather including the prediction and detection of major eruptions and coronal mass ejections (Lyman-Alpha and Herzberg continuum imaging); (2) solar forcing on the climate through radiation and their interactions with the local stratosphere (UV spectral irradiance from 180 to 400 nm by bands of 20 nm, plus Lyman-Alpha and the CN bandhead); (3) simultaneous radiative budget of the Earth, UV to IR, with an accuracy better than 1% in differential. The paper briefly outlines the mission and describes the five proposed instruments of the model payload: SUAVE (Solar Ultraviolet Advanced Variability Experiment), an optimized telescope for FUV (Lyman-Alpha) and MUV (200–220 nm Herzberg continuum) imaging (sources of variability); UPR (Ultraviolet Passband Radiometers), with 64 UV filter radiometers; a vector magnetometer; thermal plasma measurements and Langmuir probes; and a total and spectral solar irradiance and Earth radiative budget ensemble (SERB, Solar irradiance & Earth Radiative Budget). SWUSV is proposed as a small mission to CNES and to ESA for a possible flight as early as 2017–2018.