Space environment monitoring mission beyond GOES-M

Boulder, CO, 80303ABSTRACTConditions in the near-Earth space environment are of ever increasing importance to our human activities on Earthand in space. The provision of the space environment services required in future depends on improving our understanding ofsolar activity and the coupling of this activity to our local region of space, as well as improving our remote sensing and in—situmonitoring of conditions and events in the solar system. Our present service is largely analogous to the state of terrestrialweather forecasting from a local weather office before the advent of numerical modeling and remote atmospheric sensingtechnology. Numerical models of the local space environment and of interplanetary space are being developed. However,these models are limited in performance by our understanding of the underlying physical processes, and their practicalapplication is restricted by the paucity of observational data.Instruments on the Geostationary Orbiting Environmental Satellite (GOES) provide a critical resource to NOAA'sspace environment services. GOES is our most effective operational platform for real-time remote sensing of the Sun, thenear-Earth environment, and processes in interplanetary space. It also makes important in-situ measurements in a criticalregion of space that is now of huge commercial importance. This paper will discuss the planned and potential extensions ofthe GOES Space Environment Monitor (SEM) in the overall context of the data required to meet the future needs for spaceenvironment services.Keywords: Future, GOES, space, solar, services