E-SWAN Newsletter
PubCom, E-SWAN Newsletter Editor (
Volume 2026 Number 40 - October 7, 2026
E-SWAN YouTube channel - E-SWAN LinkedIn profile
New Funding for E-SWAN’s Future
Dear E-SWAN enthusiasts,
The European Space Weather Week 2026 is now just around the corner, and this year Florence will offer a particularly rich opportunity to see E-SWAN in action across many different parts of our community.
Besides the ESWW Programme Committee, which is working hard with the LOC to offer a great ESWW2026, E-SWAN Committees and Working Groups will contribute throughout the week and even before the official opening.
The Education and Outreach Committee will run the E-SWAN Space Weather Training Course, while the Sustainability Working Group will open the activities on Sunday 1 November with its Sustainability Workshop and will also contribute to TDM1 on the atmospheric impacts of spacecraft launches and re-entries.
During ESWW itself, E-SWAN activities will include:
- TDM1 on Atmospheric Impacts of Spacecraft Launches and Re-entries: Consequences for Space Weather Activities led by SUST,
- TDM2 on Community-driven data and infrastructure catalogues led by OAIDM,
- TDM5 on Open Access and scientific impact together with JSWSC and its PubCom,
- TDM11 on Space Weather impacts on GNSS performance and user needs, led by USENG and
- TDM15 on the development of a more coordinated European Space Weather system, led by SW2P· OTH4 on Education and Outreach in Space Weather: Engaging Communities and Shaping the Next Generation, co-led by EOCOM
A very special moment will of course be the International Space Weather and Space Climate Medal Ceremony on 2 November, followed the next day by the lectures of the 2026 Kristian Birkeland, Baron Marcel Nicolet, and Alexander Chizhevsky medallists.
ESWW will also be an important moment for the future governance of our Association. The call for the renewal of two positions on the E-SWAN Executive Board remains open until 15 October 2026. After the call closes, the new candidates will be announced to the membership and will have the opportunity to introduce themselves during the E-SWAN General Assembly at ESWW2026, ahead of the electronic voting process later in the year. I strongly encourage anyone considering contributing more directly to the development of E-SWAN to take this opportunity and apply.
And, finally, please make sure to visit the E-SWAN booth during the Space Weather Fair. We want it to be much more than an exhibition space: a meeting point for our members, Committees, and Working Groups; a place to discover ongoing initiatives, discuss new ideas, learn how to become involved, and simply meet one another face to face.
I am very much looking forward to meeting you in Florence at ESWW2026!
With best wishes,
Luca Spogli
President of E-SWAN
Invitation to join the COSPAR ISWAT H4-04 team “Mars Space Weather Requirements”
The COSPAR ISWAT H4 Planetary Space Weather cluster is concerned with space weather at planetary bodies other than Earth. The current focus is geared toward space weather at Mars for better scientific understanding of the environment as well as for providing space weather situational awareness for future missions. Within the cluster, the H4-04 team will gather space weather information that will help inform requirements for the safety of astronauts and robotic assets necessary for Mars exploration. Impacts and requirements are critical to guide the community toward targeted development of space weather instruments and models. The team will explore existing knowledge of hazards and risk conditions for Mars missions, covering all mission phases based on historical data from past and current robotic missions. The team will cover a wide breadth of impacts on various systems (communication, power delivery, electronics) that can occur on spacecraft, landers, and rovers related to all space weather and atmospheric conditions.
The first outcome of this project will be a community-led paper identifying the current status and gaps in the knowledge of space weather phenomena and impacts on Mars (both in orbit and on ground) and their interplay with Martian atmospheric weather (e.g., dust storms), including a comparison with the lunar environment. The timeframe for the paper is around one year.
If you’re interested in participating, please join the team at https://iswat-cospar.org/H4-04
If you know of other people that might contribute to this project, please feel free to forward this news.
A call is now open for the renewal of two positions in the Executive Board. Information and application instructions are available here.
- Sources of Space Weather and Space Climate;
- Solar Wind-Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling and Its Role in Space Climate;
- Atmospheric responses to solar and geomagnetic forcing;
- Developments in ground- and Space-based initiatives for Space Climate physics research.
Theodosios Chatzistergos — Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany.
Shipra Sinha — University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland.
Chitradeep Saha — University of Reading, Reading, England.
Nandita Srivastava — Udaipur Solar Observatory, Physical Research Laboratory, Udaipur, India.
Sowmya Krishnamurthy — University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
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PhD position — Sensing the Earth's plasma environment from the Moon
Politecnico di Torino & INGV, Italy — applications open 14 October
A fully funded three-year PhD scholarship is available at Politecnico di Torino, in collaboration with Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV, Rome), to study the coupled Earth ionosphere–plasmasphere system using GNSS signals received at lunar distance.
The project will exploit the dataset collected by LuGRE (Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment), hosted aboard the Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander. Research directions include:
- Refinement of global plasmaspheric density models
- Ionosphere–plasmasphere dynamics and geomagnetic storms
- Characterisation of ionospheric effects on signals for future lunar navigation
- Exploitation of GNSS observations acquired beyond Earth orbit
The work sits at the intersection of GNSS, remote sensing and upper-atmosphere physics, bringing together the expertise of Politecnico di Torino in GNSS and navigation with that of INGV in ionospheric and upper-atmosphere physics. The position is based in Turin and Rome and includes an international research period at partner institutions.
Applications open on 14 October via the Politecnico di Torino call for applications:
https://www.polito.it/en/
Contacts: Prof. Fabio Dovis, Dr. Claudio Cesaroni, Dr. Alex Minetto
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