NICT's Space Weather Activities -Current and Future-

Space Environment Laboratory in National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) is responsible for operational space weather forecasting in Japan. NICT routinely operate space weather services on 24/7 bases as a regional warning center of International Space Environment Service (ISES), and a part of ICAO’s global center, ACFJ. Using our own ground-based space weather observation, and space environment data from satellites collected through international collaboration, information services are provided to various space weather users such as telecommunications carriers, satellite operators, and aviation operators. Recently, in the light of the recent growing interest in the impact of geospace disturbances on social infrastructure, domestic alert level of space weather has been reviewed and summarized with considering the magnitude of the social impact. To monitor the space environment at Japanese meridian of geostationary orbit in the near future, we have been developing engineering model of new space weather sensors, RMS (Radiation Monitors for Space weather) onboard next Japanese meteorological satellite, Himawari-10. Status and future perspective of space weather activities in NICT will be introduced in our talk.

Acknowledgment: Part of this research was supported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan, Research and Development of observing technology on Himawari satellite (JPJ010737) as Research and Development project on ICT priority technology (JPMI00316).