Speaker
Description
Triggered sounding rocket launches impose an unusual set of software requirements on heliophysics data systems: a decision must be made within minutes, from heterogeneous low-latency streams, with no opportunity to re-run the analysis. The first NASA sounding rocket solar flare campaign (FOXSI-4 and Hi-C Flare, 2024 April 17) showed that a purpose-built real-time alert system can deliver flare-optimized observations inside a 5 to 7 minute window (Vievering et al. 2026). We present the enhanced framework deployed for the FOXSI-5 campaign at the Poker Flat Research Range in spring 2026, and we discuss it as a software and data-environment case study.
The system federates several independently developed tools behind a single operator display. ELSA (Early Large Solar flare Alert) applies launch trigger criteria derived from a parameter search over more than 10,000 historical GOES XRS flares, together with the Flare Anticipation Index. X-TOFF (X-ray Time of Flare Forecast) serves random forest predictions of remaining flare duration from streaming GOES data. WAFFLE (WKU Advanced Flare Forecasting aLgorithm tEam) produces near-real-time SDO/AIA high-temperature emission measure maps for spatial localization. OLAF (Online LASP Application for Flares) supplies a low-latency GOES proxy and short-term trend prediction from SDO/EVE/ESP. Advance target selection draws on the Kusano κ-scheme applied to SDO/HMI SHARP data.
We describe the resulting architecture: how services distributed across five institutions were integrated, how data latency and gaps were handled, how model output was rendered for a human decision-maker under time pressure, and how the system was validated and operated on site at a remote range. We report campaign performance, discuss failure modes and lessons learned, and outline what would be needed to generalize this framework, through common interfaces and shared data standards, into a reusable resource for coordinated multi-instrument observations and operational space weather monitoring.