Using realtime data

from NASA satellites

Ilkka SillanpIlkka Sillanpääää, PhD, PhD

NASA SpaceApps Challenge, Mikkeli 10-12 April 2015NASA SpaceApps Challenge, Mikkeli 10-12 April 2015

OutlineOutline• Space Science today

–space weather–amateur efforts

• Data portals and files

• Realtime issues• Python • Webpage and appsConclusions

Exciting Times in Space Science

• Rosetta comet orbiter and lander

• Dawn is now visiting Ceres • 1st Pluto visit by New Horizons

this July!

Ilkka Sillanpää

Link to Ceres movie

Titan-simulaatioita Saturnuksen magneettikentässä

Ilkka Sillanpää

Space Storms

On March 17 we had a space storm event.

Big auroras that are often visible in Finlandare tied to thespace storms happening in the space around Earth.

Titan-simulaatioita Saturnuksen magneettikentässä

Ilkka Sillanpää

University of Colorado: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDJmUHA86EA

Earth magnetic field protects us from most of the solar wind. High solar wind presses the magnetosphere and more plasma particle can reach Earth – in the polar regions.

Space Weather is caused by the Sun

Amateur efforts – no small matter

Ilkka Sillanpää

Gordan UgarkovicTed StryxBonora and Faccin

amateur images promoted

by Emily

Lakdawallaat planetary.org

See trailer of an awesome 4k crowdfunding movie

“In Saturn’s Rings” – using 2 million NASA images especially from

Cassini mission

CopyRights issues

NASA claims no copyright – nor NOAA and others

In Europe it’s pretty bad. ESA:

Ilkka Sillanpää

The information on US government web pages is in the public domain and not subject to copyright protection within the United States unless specifically annotated otherwise (copyright may be held elsewhere). Foreign copyrights may apply.

The information on US government web pages is in the public domain and not subject to copyright protection within the United States unless specifically annotated otherwise (copyright may be held elsewhere). Foreign copyrights may apply.

ESA grants permission to users to visit the site, and to download and copy information, images, documents and materials from the website for non-commercial use. You can’t resell or redistribute any information, documents, images or material nor to compile nor create derivative works from material on its website.

Data RepositoriesMajor Data Portals:

NASA: several data archives for astronomy, see heararc.gsfc.nasa.gov for linksSpace Physics Data Facility shows

which satellite data is in which archive

Planetary Data System - all planet mission data (delay 6mo+)

OmniWeb - archival magnetospheric data

Ilkka Sillanpää

Data RepositoriesMajor Data Portals continued: NOAA: Main archive CLASS

Sat. and Inform. Service NESDIS- realtime weather sat images

Space Weather Pred. Ctr - realtime magnetosph. data

ESA:Planetary Science ArchiveEarth observations EOportal.org

Ilkka Sillanpää

Data formats• Image files• NetCDF and other binaries (versions issues)• ASCII files like .txt and .csv (also html):

- parsing (and verifying) much simpler - each source and even data type need

their own parsers

Retrieval: ftp-sites and url-links(check exceptions for fails)

Ilkka Sillanpää

Realtime products (Earth science)

• There are hourly, and even minute resolution data. Really no ‘instantaneous’ updates. There will be lag.

In Linux crontab is great for scheduling. In IMPTAM: running the model, checking restarts; retrieval of inputs, sending outputs to project sites. Plotting routines and sending to webpage

Ilkka Sillanpää

Python (v2.7) – our weapon of choice

• transferable, understandable, try-exception, libraries (import command)

• urlretrieve for files from url links• Paramiko (github) for sftp• Matplotlib for scientific plotting (date plotting!)

Bash often handier for small os level tasks.

Octave is a viable option for (line) plotting

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WSDL and php-Soap

• Satellite coordinates in wanted coordinate systems through NASA WSDL site:

http://cdaweb.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/WebServices/SOAP

php is clunky; but php-Soap classes are provided:http://sscweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/WebServices/SOAP/PhpExample.html

However, all needed libraries are not obvious.

Also Java API access (or Perl)http://cdaweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/WebServices/SOAP/public/api/

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IMPTAM model

Simulation model of radiation belt electrons: important for satellite electric charging and our output is used to model

higher energy particlesInputs: realtime or archival solar wind data

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Our IMPTAM webpage

• imptam.fmi.fi Realtime monitoring of modeling and satellite

and space weather data. Only a tool – real science happens in analysisNot unique – there are many others, but important for our project – a showcase and ‘feed’

for websites of projects we are involved in.

Ilkka Sillanpää

Titan-simulaatioita Saturnuksen magneettikentässäConclusions

Amateur efforts can play a big role in bringing space science to the public- requires overhaul of European copyrights!

Earth monitoring, planetary and astronomical data archives are online and free to use

Realtime apps could be develoved for Space Weather monitoring and Earth imagingFuture is in Open Access - and it’s already here

Thank youThank you for participating in for participating in

NASA app challenge 2015! NASA app challenge 2015! Ilkka Sillanpää,

PhDspace scientist@samooja on

twitterilkka.sillanpaa@fm

i.fi

This presentation: imptam.fmi.fi/

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