Monitoring Space Weather in the Artemis Era

The 2022 Artemis-I mission marked the beginning of an era of Beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) travel, with planned expeditions to the Moon and Mars. This uncrewed mission served as a testbed for new technologies, including those enhancing the understanding of the radiation environment, developed for crewed missions beginning in late 2024. The Space Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG) at NASA/Johnson Space Center (JSC) is tasked with mitigating crew radiation exposure. With the transition from LEO to Beyond-LEO space comes a change to the space environment, as the vehicle no longer benefits from the protection of the Earth’s geomagnetic field. The current presentation focuses on mitigation of the impacts of solar particle events (SPEs), a sporadic increase in particle flux associated with enhanced solar activity. Advanced warning of the probability and intensity of SPEs is important for planning and communicating mitigation steps for the crew. Since 2018, SRAG has collaborated with the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) and the Moon to Mars (M2M) Space Weather Office at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center to develop three SPE model Scoreboards, currently in use by the SRAG console at Mission Control; a Probability Scoreboard consolidating outputs from space weather models representing the probability of an SPE, an Intensity Scoreboard representing models projecting the peak intensity and the progression with time of an anticipated event with time, and the likelihood that no event will occur (an All-Clear forecast). The transition of these space weather models from the research realm to operational use represents an effort between NASA and multiple international and domestic groups, both in academia and small business ventures. These Scoreboards were tested with the other new radiation mitigation technologies during Artemis-I, providing situational awareness to the team during the mission. Based on user feedback from the mission and results from validation work, development of the model Scoreboards continues as NASA prepares for Artemis-II.