R-TFA Swarm

Swarm is ESA’s first constellation of Earth observation satellites designed to measure the magnetic signals from Earth’s core, mantle, crust, oceans, ionosphere and magnetosphere, providing data that will allow scientists to study the complexities of our protective magnetic field (Copyright ESA/AOES Medialab)

This work was supported by the Excellence Research Program GSRT (2015-2017) Aristotle
"Environment, Space and Geodynamics/Seismology 2015-2017".

Swarm mission

Swarm is the fifth Earth Explorer mission approved in ESA's Living Planet Programme, and was successfully launched on 22 November 2013. The objective of the Swarm mission is to provide the best-ever survey of the geomagnetic field and its temporal evolution as well as the electric field in the atmosphere using a constellation of 3 identical satellites carrying sophisticated magnetometers and electric field instruments. Is also ESA’s first constellation of satellites to advance our understanding of how Earth works.

You can find more details about the Swarm mission here.

About R-TFA Tool

The Revised Time-Frequency Analysis (R-TFA) tool for the Swarm mission Level1B datasets introduces a new user-friendly interface and presents a number of applications and capabilities. The traditional or conventional Time-Frequency Analysis (TFA) tool is a suite of algorithms based on wavelet transforms, tailored to the analysis of Level 1b data from the Swarm mission (Balasis et al., EPS 2013, GRL 2015). The aim of the TFA tool has been to combine the advantages of multi-spacecraft and ground-based monitoring of the geospace environment to detect, analyze and study magnetospheric ultra-low frequency (ULF) waves. The TFA tool has been offered a useful platform to monitor the wave evolution from the outer boundaries of Earth’s magnetosphere through the topside ionosphere, where Swarm mission flies, down to the surface.

You can find the web interface of R-TFA tool by clicking the following button

Scientific info

The three identical Swarm satellites are measuring precisely the magnetic signals that stem from Earth’s core, mantle, crust and oceans, as well as from the ionosphere and magnetosphere. By analyzing the different characteristics of the observed field, this state-of-the-art mission will lead to new insight into many natural processes, from those occurring deep inside the planet to weather in space caused by solar activity. In turn, this information will yield a better understanding of why the magnetic field is weakening. The geomagnetic field models resulting from the mission will provide new insights into Earth’s interior. These data along with measurements of atmospheric conditions around the orbiting satellites will further studies into Earth’s weakening magnetic shield, space weather and radiation hazards.

Team

Dr. G. Balasis (PI, Senior Researcher)
Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing National Observatory of Athens

Prof. I. A. Daglis (Professor of Space Physics)
National & Kapodistrian Univserisy of Athens

Dr. O. Giannakis (Senior Application Scientist)
Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing National Observatory of Athens

Mr. C. Papadimitriou (Developer)
Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing National Observatory of Athens

Mr. Ath. Daglis (Software Engineer)
Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing National Observatory of Athens

Mr. G. Vasalos (IT specialist)
Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing National Observatory of Athens