Artemyev receives $380K NSF grant for project to help improve space weather predictions

Wednesday, Nov 11, 2026 • Greg Pederson :

Anton Artemyev, UTA associate professor of physics

A space physicist at The University of Texas at Arlington is launching a federally funded study to develop a new model to describe the energy and intensity of electrons entering Earth’s atmosphere. The research will help scientists better predict space weather, which is vital for protecting satellites, power grids, GPS navigation, and more.

Anton Artemyev, UTA associate professor of physics, received a four-year, $380,322 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs for the project, titled “Collaborative Research: Exploring Polar Ionospheric Precipitation Using Antarctic X-ray Observations.”

Created by the Sun, the solar wind is a steady, powerful stream of energetic particles, many of them electrons, that flow from the Sun’s outer atmosphere through space. When the solar wind reaches Earth, our magnetosphere — the region of space dominated by a planet’s magnetic field — deflects many of these particles, but some get through and rain down into Earth’s upper atmosphere. Scientists call this energetic electron precipitation, or EEP.

Once there, the particles release energy and cause space weather storms that can disrupt everything from satellites in space to ship communications on the oceans to power grids on land. These storms can also alter the atmosphere’s chemistry, which influences Earth’s climate.

“All of these effects depend on how the electrons are released, how much energy they carry, and how deeply they penetrate the atmosphere,” Artemyev said. “This study will investigate how and why these particles, especially high-energy electrons, are lost from Earth’s magnetic environment and precipitate into the atmosphere.”

The results will improve scientists’ understanding of how activity in near-Earth space affects the upper atmosphere and provide more reliable information for computer models used to study space weather, he said.

The research will utilize measurements gathered by scientific balloons positioned over Antarctica, which recorded X-rays produced when energetic electrons entered the atmosphere. These measurements will be compared with observations from several NASA-funded satellite missions to identify the different processes and determine how often they occur under different space weather conditions.

“We will use these combined observations to develop a new statistical model which describes the energy and intensity of electrons entering the atmosphere through each process,” Artemyev said. “Using this model will allow us to estimate where in the atmosphere the electrons deposit their energy and how strongly they affect the surrounding environment.”

Focusing on Antarctica provides a unique opportunity to study these processes across a broad range of conditions using an extensive archive of balloon measurements, Artemyev said. The results will improve scientists’ understanding of how activity in near-Earth space affects the upper atmosphere and provide more reliable information for computer models used to study space weather.

“The expected outcome of the study is a unified, quantitative description of EEP drivers and their relative contributions, improving predictive capability for radiation belt dynamics and space weather impacts,” Artemyev said.

All curated datasets and supporting documentation from the study will be made accessible to the public for free, which will help other researchers improve their models and build on the project’s findings.

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