The recipient has developed a new tool under a previous grant to visualize the solar wind environment in a fully interactive 3D environment. Under that effort, the recipient are able to bring the tool…

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) awarded a $149,976.00 grant to the University of Colorado, an accredited public research university, to further develop and validate a solar wind visualization tool that can enhance space weather forecasting capabilities. The tool, which has reached Technology Readiness Level 4, will undergo additional testing and integration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center and the UK Met Office to bring it to a demonstration-ready state at Technology Readiness Level 6. This grant-funded effort aims to provide forecasters with a more comprehensive 3D view of the solar wind environment, enabling better analysis of out-of-plane effects and near-misses that are not readily apparent in current 2D visualizations. The University of Colorado has a track record of delivering research and development services to federal agencies, including NASA, the Department of Defense, and NOAA, in areas such as space weather modeling, AI-enabled decision support, and environmental assessments.

The recipient has developed a new tool under a previous grant to visualize the solar wind environment in a fully interactive 3D environment. Under that effort, the recipient are able to bring the tool to readiness level (RL) 4 (successful evaluation of system, subsystem, process, product, service, or tool in a laboratory or other experimental environment). Researchers and forecasters at NOAA swpc and the UK met office have expressed great interest in moving forward with validation testing in their operational workflows. This capability is thus ready for the next step in the transition process the intended end-users (forecasters) are interested in IT, and the team is primed and able to efficiently move forward with this additional work that would bring this application to RL-6 (demonstration of a prototype system, subsystem, process, product, service, or tool in relevant or test environment).given that the recipient have emphasized solid software engineering best practices and have used a containerized cloud-first paradigm for our development and testing, which is the same approach that the ccmc and swpc ACE platform utilizes, the recipient estimate the RL for our tool to be at RL-4 and thus expect the transition of our tool to RL-5/RL-6 to be relatively straightforward and able to be completed within the timeframe allotted. Making this visualization technique available to forecasters will allow them to investigate out-of-plane effects and near-misses that are otherwise uncaught with the current 2D slices that are used within the operational centers. This will enable deeper investigations by the forecasters and better output forecast products for the public.