Daily e-mail Jan 17th 2013

Good Morning 

Payloads up: 

SANAE IV: 1K, 1O, 

Halley 6: 1D, 1I, 1G, 1C

Payloads ready for flight:

SANAE IV: The weather has gotten worse so launches, not sure when they might be able to launch again. 

Halley 6: 1C launched yesterday. No new news yet about future launches

Payloads coming down:

1K is close to McMurdo so we are watching it closely incase it needs to be cut down. 

1O has started falling so we may be cutting it down soon. 

 

Conjunctions with the Van Allen Satellites: 

Jan 14 2013

Sat. A 0000 UT - 0650 UT

Sat. A 0840 UT - 1620 UT

Sat. B 0000 UT - 0650 UT

Sat. B 0820 UT - 1600 UT

Jan 15 2013

Sat. A 0220 UT - 1000 UT

Sat. B 0200 UT - 0935 UT

Jan 16 2013

Sat. A 0530 UT - 1310 UT

Sat. B 0530 UT - 1310 UT

Jan 17 2013

Sat. A 0030 UT - 0650 UT

Sat. B 0030 UT - 0650 UT

Jan 18 2013

Sat. A 0205 UT - 1000 UT

Sat. B 0205 UT - 1000 UT

Jan 19 2013

Sat. A 0535 UT - 1300 UT

Sat. B 0535 UT - 1300 UT

GOES Electron Flux:

GOES 15 and 13 are still seeing higher fluxes in both the >2MeV and >0.8MeV energy ranges, but they have decreased since yesterday and are returning to the pre-CME level.

GOES Proton Flux:

There was a large increase in the >10 MeV flux due to the long duration x-ray event which occurred today. 

Space Weather from Spaceweather.com

Solar wind speed is 386.0 km/s

Solar proton density 26.0 cm^(-3) (nope that's not a mistake, it's up at 26)

62 sunspots are now visible. NOAA decreased the likelihood of a M class flare to 40% and a 5% chance of an X class flare. In fact there haven't even been any C class flares in the last 24 hours. The evil twins are now about 3/4ths of the way across the sun, starting to come into range of being geo-effective. On the plus side, they have decreased in complexity to a beta-gamma configuration meaning (I think?) that it could produce large M class but perhaps not X class flares. The is due to a decay of the sunspot in the middle. There was another possibly geo-effective CME occurred today and came from a separate sunspot region which was observed by LASCO and STEREO Ahead. It is expected to hit sometime on the 20th of January. GOES 13 10 MeV proton flux increase after this event and appears to be associated with this event. 

Kp is quiet kp = 1 with a 24 max of kp = 3

Bz = 6.4 nT south

Btotal = 12.0 nT 

There are no large coronal holes on the sun. 

From Kyoto:

AE: small blips in AE throughout the day

Dst: A large SI at around 0300 UT

Talk to you all soon