Solar X-ray Imager (SXI) Current and Future Requirements 22 May 2001 Steve Hill Solar Causes and Effects... Operational Requirements Improvements for GOES-R+ Program Status Other Imaging...

NOAA Space Environment Center 2 22 May 2001 Causes and...

NOAA Space Environment Center 3 22 May Effects Transformer Damage Tripping July 15-16, 2000 Voltage Variations Electric Power Systems

NOAA Space Environment Center 4 22 May 2001 Current Solar Imaging Requirements Locate coronal holes for recurring geomagnetic storm predictions Monitor for changes indicating coronal mass ejections (CMEs) for non-recurring geomagnetic storm forecasts Locate flares for particle events predictions, including flares beyond the west limb Active regions beyond east limb, rotating onto the solar disk, for activity forecasts Active region complexity for flare forecasts Without SXI, we get only two numbers from XRS to represent solar x-ray activity.

NOAA Space Environment Center 5 22 May 2001 GOES R+ SXI Improvements Increase dynamic range from 100 to 10 4 –Reduce temporal ‘smearing’ in wide dynamic range products –Produce single products for short-term (e.g., flare related) forecasts and mid-term (e.g., coronal hole related) forecasts –Produce frequent and consistent temperature maps Maintain coverage with no gaps longer than 2 minutes –Avoid loss of flare location information during eclipse season –Enable dedicated product production Double sensitivity –Improve signal to noise in coronal holes Improve spatial sampling –Reduce pixel size to 1,800 km to properly sample optical FWHM of 5,000 km

NOAA Space Environment Center 6 22 May 2001 GOES SXI Image Products N/QR+ Single-band image dynamic range (1 per min.)~ Wide dynamic range (composite) image interval min. Effective temperature map interval min. Simulated GOES SXI single band images: N/Q left, R+ right. (X-ray images courtesy Yohkoh SXT).

NOAA Space Environment Center 7 22 May 2001 Program Status GOES-M SXI: –Ground System ready for preflight testing: 11 Jun 2001 –Launch:12 Jul 2001 –SXI First Image:10 Aug 2001 –GOES Post Launch Test Complete:8 Nov 2001 –SXI and Data System Operational?:15 Jan 2002 GOES-N/Q Status –Engineering model delivered to Boeing –Instrument exceeds requirements, meets goals. –Launch readiness: January 2003

NOAA Space Environment Center 8 22 May 2001 Other Imaging Trades Approach –Co-mount a complementary imager with SXI –Minimize impact to volumetric envelope an spacecraft interface –Nested normal incidence optics inside X-ray grazing optics? Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging –Longer wavelength (cooler, lower in corona) imaging –Benefits: Certain transient phenomena may be better seen Trades against existing ground-based networks –H-alpha imaging - Chromosphere imaging –He I 10,830 imaging - Coronal hole imaging Which type of observation most benefits users? Which type of observation best complements SXI?

NOAA Space Environment Center 9 22 May 2001 Summary The current (2001) GOES SXI provides essential information on the solar atmosphere Primary improvement is in dynamic range Other improvements include continuity, spatial resolution, and temperature range and discrimination Many other imaging possibilities exist to help with space weather forecasting