On 24 May 2024, the headquarters of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) hosted the final meeting of the CAESAR Comprehensive Space Weather Studies for the ASPIS Prototype Realization implementation project.
Selected and supported by the Italian Space Agency and the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) under implementation agreement ASI-INAF No. 2020-35-HH.0 within the ASPIS (ASI SPace Weather InfraStructure) programme, the project aims at developing a scientific data centre for Space Weather. Besides ASI and INAF, the project also involves the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology (INGV) as well as seven Italian universities (Calabria, Catania, Genova, L’Aquila, Perugia, Rome Tor Vergata and Trento) and some foreign institutes (see project website). The project objectives include advancing the understanding of the origin and evolution of Space Weather phenomena and providing novel and longstanding data, codes and models, as well as designing, implementing and populating with such products the ASPIS prototype in a flexible user-friendly infrastructure and paving the way to future advanced forecasting capabilities. Last but not least, the project aims at ensuring efficient dissemination and foster future studies.
For this purpose, researchers involved in the project have performed detailed studies to understand the causes and effects on human health and society of the whole chain of phenomena from the Sun to Earth up to planetary environments, occurring after solar eruptions. The most important successes of CAESAR include the implementation of the prototype of the first space weather database developed by ASI.
Giuseppe Sindoni, ASPIS project leader for ASI, said that CAESAR is the first prototype in Italy of a strategically relevant infrastructure that can be used by the entire scientific community of Space Weather. This will lead ASPIS to become a node for the aggregating and development of scientific activities related to Space Weather research for the Italian scientific community. “The science supported by ASPIS aims at helping the Italian scientific community to take advantage of the opportunities for participation that will open up in the EU and globally, both in the field of modelling and data analysis, and in that of instrumentation, by providing support and tools for the study of the lunar, cislunar or Martian environment, to assess the effects on payloads and astronauts, and to study magnetospheres and planetary surfaces”.
