VSWMC: Virtual Space Weather Modelling Centre
Space weather is not a distant threat; it’s an operational challenge. Solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and geomagnetic storms can interfere with satellites, navigation systems, power grids, and crewed missions. The timeline for impact is short — sometimes less than half an hour from event to consequence — which means forecasting must be both fast and accurate.
The Virtual Space Weather Modelling Centre (VSWMC), developed under ESA’s Space Situational Awareness programme, was built to meet that need. It links together a growing set of advanced space weather models, covering everything from solar activity in the corona to the chain of effects in the heliosphere, magnetosphere, ionosphere, thermosphere, and radiation belts. By using the High-Level Architecture (HLA) standard, VSWMC can run these models in parallel across distributed computing resources, without forcing them into a single codebase. The result is a flexible system that can couple different physics domains into a single, end-to-end simulation.
Over time, the platform has expanded to include detailed models for the solar corona, solar wind propagation, geomagnetic activity, ionospheric dynamics, radiation belt fluxes, and even spacecraft charging. Recent integrations such as the COCONUT coronal model, the Icarus adaptive mesh magnetosphere model, and the PARADISE particle acceleration simulator have further strengthened its forecasting capabilities. The models are not just run in isolation; they exchange data during execution, allowing users to track the evolution of an event from Sun to Earth in a single workflow.
At Rays of Space, our role is to make this distributed, high-performance system both reliable and operational. We design the infrastructure that can handle large volumes of observational and simulation data without bottlenecks, adapt models to the coupling framework so they work together seamlessly, and deploy the system on scalable HPC resources that can expand during periods of intense solar activity. The VSWMC is accessed via the SWE Portal, with a browser-based interface that gives users visual results and interactive controls without needing to install complex software locally.
The aim is not just to run sophisticated models, but to make their output actionable — giving scientists and operators a tool that can deliver accurate, timely forecasts and help mitigate the risks of space weather. As we continue to integrate new physics models, improve data exchange between components, and reduce execution times, the VSWMC is becoming a cornerstone of Europe’s capability to understand and respond to solar-driven space weather events.
