Space weather explorer – The KuaFu mission

Abstract

The KuaFu mission is designed to explore the physical processes that are responsible for space weather, complementing planned in situ and ground-based programs, and also to make an essential contribution to the space weather application. KuaFu encompasses three spacecraft. KuaFu-A will be located at the L1 libration point and have instruments to observe solar extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and far ultraviolet (FUV) emissions and white-light coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and to measure radio waves, the local plasma and magnetic field, and high-energy particles. KuaFu-B1 and KuaFu-B2 will be in elliptical polar orbits chosen to facilitate continuous (24 h per day 7 days per week) observation of the northern polar aurora oval and the inner magnetosphere. The KuaFu mission is designed to observe globally the complete chain of disturbances from the solar atmosphere to geospace, including solar flares, CMEs, interplanetary clouds, shock waves, and their geo-effects, with a particular focus on dramatic space weather events such as magnetospheric substorms and magnetic storms. The mission start is targeted for the next solar maximum with launch hoped for in 2012. The initial mission lifetime will be 3 years. The overall mission design, instrument complement, and incorporation of recent technologies will advance our understanding of the physical processes underlying space weather, solve several key outstanding questions including solar CME initiation, Earth magnetic storm and substorm mechanisms, and advance our understanding of multi-scale interactions in and system-level behavior of our Sun–Earth space plasma system.