04.24.12 – In 2009, as a follow up to the International Heliophysical Year of 2007, a group of scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., had an idea to dramatically increase heliophysics observatories around the world. Their plan: place science instruments all over the globe to fill in gaps of observations of the near-Earth environment and of Earth's atmosphere and also to encourage heliophysics research and education in developing nations.
In conjunction with the United Nations, the group began something called the International Space Weather Initiative (ISWI) and they began to encourage scientists and engineers all over the world to help out. Now, five years later, close to 1,000 instruments have been installed in more than 100 UN member states, numerous science papers have been written on the data, new graduate school programs have been established -- and the project continues to grow. Recently in Feb. 2012, for example, says Hans Haubold from the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, an International Center for Space Weather Science and Education was inaugurated at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan, with support from the United Nations.
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— SDO Mission
— SDO Mission
