RHEA at the 8th European Space Weather Week
Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium 7th of October 2011 - RHEA System S.A. (RHEA) is pleased to announce it is sponsoring the Eighth European Space Weather Week taking place on the 28th of November 2011 - 2nd of December 2011 in Namur, Belgium. At this year’s ESWW the topics that will be discussed relate to key innovations in Space Weather research, applications, services and the actions necessary towards the development of a sustainable Space Weather Infrastructure. RHEA presence during ESWW will be significant as RHEA is sponsoring the Key Debate and presenting the topics of Precursor Space Weather services within the ESA Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Program.
RHEA is ESA Prime Contractor for the “Space Weather Precursor Services” contract, a key element of the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme. SSA Space Weather (SWE) segment aims at creating a consolidated infrastructure to provide services related to the solar wind, the magnetosphere, the ionosphere and the geomagnetic impacts of space weather. Within the scope of the “Space Weather Precursor Contract” RHEA is tasked to perform a comprehensive scientific, technical and programmatic analysis of European expertise, systems and services within the scientific and research community. As the establishment of the SWE precursor services within the SSA program will be based on the utilization of the existing space weather expertise and services, some of these services will be federated into the SSA SWE system as they are pre-operational and have an existing end-user community. A selection of available assets will be integrated as precursor services accessible via a newly developed Web Portal. RHEA and its collaborators will as well define a “Development Roadmap”, showing the evolution to a fully federated, service oriented architecture that maximizes utilization of specialist space weather expertise across the whole of Europe. RHEA leads a highly prestigious team of internationally recognized expert institutes and university departments, namely the Royal Observatory of Belgium, the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, DLR, Tromsø Geophysical Observatory and the Austrian Institute of Technology, Kanzelhöhe Observatory; this in collaboration with industry members.
“The European Space Weather Week is a major event in the European Space Industry and RHEA is proud to be taking an active role” said Simon Reid, Chief Engineer of RHEA System S.A. “ ESA’s SSA Program signals a significant step forward for Space Weather in Europe and provides a unique opportunity to combine these relevant skills and contribute to the preparation of a fully operational space weather system. RHEA has been a primary provider of Space Weather expertise to ESA for over 13 years and we look forward to working actively with the space weather scientific community, with interested users and with ESA to further enhance Europe knowledge capacity and capability”
RHEA System S.A. is a leading Space Engineering Consulting and Software company, the fastest growing Belgium based SME that offers knowledge-based services and innovative proven solutions to the space industry. Our teams of system engineers and scientists provide support to clients across Europe, Canada and the USA. RHEA’s combined Space domain expertise and excellence in system and software engineering is both recognised and unique, resulting in highly reliable user-centric solutions.
