The SWx TREC Research Enterprise conducts innovative, basic, and applied research in space domain science (SDS), machine learning, geomagnetically induced electric and magnetic fields, and related topics to better understand and predict space weather phenomena. 

SWx TREC researchers work across multiple departments, colleges, and institutes at the University of Colorado and collaborate with other universities, government agencies, and industries. These partnerships enable breakthrough advances in understanding the solar and space physics principles that underlie space weather and its impacts on critical infrastructure systems.

Space Domain Science

Space is a critical domain for our technology-reliant and space-faring nation and is an ever-changing, harsh, and challenging domain in which to survive and operate. Space domain science (SDS) focuses on the space environment where changing conditions, driven by space weather and human-induced changes such as orbital debris, can affect the operations of satellite systems and the endeavor of human space exploration. By developing predictive capabilities, SDS complements space domain awareness (SDA)—the identification, characterization, and tracking of orbital objects—to help mitigate adverse events and enable informed decision-making for the operational space community. Together, SDS and SDA work to minimize national security risk and economic and environmental impacts in near-Earth space.

Global Electric and Magnetic Perturbations Research

Space weather often creates perturbations in Earth’s electric and magnetic fields, most noticeably through the visible aurora. In addition to aurora, space weather is also directly associated with other disturbances in the broader Sun-Earth system: the global electric circuit; transient current sources in the ionosphere and magnetosphere; diverse conductive channels; and a variety of charge distributions that incorporate many different regions and scales throughout the Sun-Earth system.

Critical infrastructure like the power grid and transmission lines are conductively tied into this natural electrical system and consequently are affected by these field disturbances. The diversity in discipline and scale makes perturbations in the electric and magnetic system a frontier research problem for solar-terrestrial system studies. And the impact on the electrical infrastructure makes such disturbances a space weather area of research relevant to society.