Image of Earth at night with lights glowing on Earth’s surface. Above Earth are green, and red bands of light signifying airglow. Above the bands of light is a black space with white stars and an orange and green band of light below the airglow.
Logo for the SPARTA Space Weather Center of Excellence overlaid on a photograph of Earth from space.
illustration depicting signals passing through ionosphere

SPARTA

The Space Weather Research and Technology Applications (SPARTA) Center, led by principal investigator Dr. Keith Groves, aims to reduce society’s vulnerabilities to space weather events, particularly the effects of ionospheric scintillation, or irregularities in the atmosphere caused by high solar activity, on communication, navigation, and timing systems. Using sophisticated forecasting methods, SPARTA will improve readiness for these events by providing a global scintillation forecast capability.

To achieve this, SPARTA will improve the forecasting of ionospheric irregularities and scintillation by: 
1. Demonstrating a baseline capability for forecasting ionospheric irregularities and scintillation using existing physics-based ionospheric models
2. Implementing machine-learning algorithms to demonstrate the potential for real-time forecasts and to explore the observational dependencies of the forecast accuracy
3. Developing robust, modular scintillation forecast algorithms to support users of
space-based radio frequency systems

Location

Boston College

Program Foucus

Ionospheric Scintillation Forecasting

Principal investigator

Dr. Keith Groves

Project Manager

Dr. Kathleen Kraemer

Infographic illustrating a shield protecting Earth from the Sun's rays. Test on the image reads "Shielding Users from Unexpected Scintillation Impacts," and "SPARA SWxC - Space Weather Research and Technology Applications: Specifying and forecasting ionospheric irregularities and scintillation and their impacts on Communication, Navigation, and Timing Systems."
Infographic created by the SPARTA Team to illustrate their research protecting Earth's activities from unseen ionospheric irregularities.
SPARTA Space Weather Center of Excellence

SPARTA Collaborators and Partners

SPARTA’s team involves co-investigators and collaborators from across the U.S. and around the world, including The Aerospace Corporation, Boston University, Cornell University, University of Colorado Boulder, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Haystack Observatory, Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory, University of New Brunswick, Air Force Research Laboratory, German Aerospace Center (Germany), Federal Aviation Administration, GeoOptics Inc., National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (Italy), Met Office (United Kingdom), NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (Japan), PlanetiQ, South African National Space Agency (South Africa), Spire Global, and University of Birmingham (United Kingdom).

Leveraged NASA Missions

  • Hurricane Idalia as photographed by NASA's Terra satellite in August 2023. The swirling mass of the hurricane passes over some land masses and the ocean.

    COSMIC

    Read more about NOAA's Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate satellite.

  • An artist's rendering of one of the CYGNSS spacecraft in orbit.

    CYGNSS

    Read more about the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System.

  • 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

    Read more about the Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk.

  • ICON, shown in this artist’s concept, studied the frontiers of space, the dynamic zone high in our atmosphere where terrestrial weather from below meets space weather above.

    ICON

    Read more about the Ionospheric Connection Explorer.

  • Artist's concept of NASA's Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission. Credit: NASA/The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL).

    TIMED

    Read more about Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere, Energetics, and Dynamics.

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