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Center for Geospace Storms

Striking red and orange lines from the bottom left give way around a blueish-purple bubble of geomagnetic lines surrounding Earth.

About The Center for Geospace Storms

The DRIVE Science Center for Geospace Storms (CGS) aims to unravel the complex web of interactions during solar storms in geospace, the roughly one million miles of space that surrounds Earth. To do this, the CGS DRIVE center is building a physics-based, predictive, community model of stormtime geospace called the Multiscale Atmosphere-Geospace Environment (MAGE) model.

More about MAGE
LocationThe Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Focus AreaPhysics Based, Predictive Modeling of Stormtime Geospace
DirectorSlava Merkin
Deputy DirectorMichael Wiltberger
Featured Video

Geomagnetic and Atmospheric Response to May 2024 Solar Storm

This visualization shows the Earth's magnetosphere being hit by a geomagnetic storm. The MAGE model simulates real events that happened throughout May 10-11, 2024.

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Stormtime Geospace

Storm time geospace is made up of a tangled web of interactions that vary from small to large scale all at once. This has been overwhelmingly challenging to predict or simulate. In addition to creating dazzling auroral displays, these interactions can endanger or harm astronauts, disrupt satellite communications, damage spacecraft, or even cause blackouts on the ground. This makes it imperative for scientists and researchers to study these interactions to help predict space weather events.

While the MAGE model is being built, CGS tests the model using several existing and available datasets using ground- and satellite-based measurements. This enables CGS to discover, understand, and quantify the connections across scales, domains, and energy populations that occur in stormtime geospace.

CGS empowers the heliophysics community by delivering an open-source whole geospace, multi-physics simulation model to facilitate widespread research. Along with its partners, CGS provides robust training, research, and career development opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral and early career scientists in the pursuit of developing a NASA heliophysics workforce of the future. Other broadening impacts activities include enhancing the nation’s readiness for space weather events and informing the public about the wonders of heliophysics. The CGS website has much more information about this exciting DRIVE Center.

Contributing Institutions

  • The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL)
  • The U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Science (NSF NCAR)
  • University of New Hampshire (UNH)
  • Virginia Tech (VT)
  • Rice University
  • University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
  • Syntek Technologies

Collaborators

  • American Museum of Natural History
  • Maryland Science Center
  • NASA Community Coordinated Modeling Center

Leveraged Missions

Ace Spacecraft

ACE

The Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) collects and analyzes particles from near and far, ranging from solar wind ions to galactic cosmic ray nuclei.

An illustration. On the left, there is the Wind spacecraft, small in a cloud of dark orange. On the right, there is the Earth, surrounding by a bubble of blue, with lines stretching toward the right.

Wind

Wind is a spin-stabilized spacecraft that observes the solar wind that is about to impact the magnetosphere of Earth.

MMS

The Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission investigates how the Sun's and Earth's magnetic fields connect and disconnect, explosively transferring energy from one to the other.

In the background, the bottom half of the image is filled with a portion of Earth. The top half is the very dark blue of space. Separating the two are bands of glowing greens and red, depicting the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere. In the foreground, a satellite. The satellite has two rectangular wing-like structures jutting out from the right and left of a silver rectangular box. On the top are 3 large white dishes.

GOLD

The Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk mission measures densities and temperatures in Earth’s thermosphere and ionosphere.

THEMIS-ARTEMIS

Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) - Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of Moon's Interaction with the Sun (ARTEMIS)

Spacecraft in space.

DSCOVR

Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) is a joint mission between NASA, NOAA and the USAF that maintains the nation's real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities.

DMSP

NOAA's Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites are operated complementary to NOAA’s polar-orbiting satellites.

model flux rope NASA CCMC

Community Coordinated Modeling Center

The CCMC (Community Coordinated Modeling Center) is a multi-agency partnership enabling, supporting, and performing research and development for next-generation space science and space weather models.

Artist's rendering of van allen waves

Van Allen Probes

Explore hands-on activities, interactive, lesson plans, educator guides, and other downloadable content about this topic.

TWINS

The TWINS (Two Wide-angle Imaging Neutral-atom Spectrometers) mission studies the connections between different areas of Earth's magnetosphere.

Spacecraft far from Earth, Moon and Sun.

Geotail

Geotail provided information about the way the magnetosphere responds to incoming material and energy from the Sun. Launched in 1992 and surviving much longer than planned, Geotail continued to send back crucial data until operations ended on Nov. 28, 2022.

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Space Weather

Sun

Heliosphere

NASA Heliophysics

The Science Mission Directorate Heliophysics Division studies the Sun and its dynamic influence across our complex, interconnected solar system.