Space Sciences Innovations Inc. is dedicated to advancing the scientific understanding of the atmosphere, space environment, and translating this into actionable information for our customers.
Our products provide great immediate and mid to long term benefits to NASA, Air Force and commercial satellite companies for its operational fleet of satellites. We serve our clients by providing research, development and analysis delivered in reports, databases and software solutions.
Company staff consists of experienced scientists and data analysts with background in Earth’s radiation belts research, data assimilation and data modeling, computational dynamics. Through externally funded research conducted by our in-house scientific staff, and often in collaboration with world-renowned scientists at academic and other research institutions, we have developed analytical tools to help measure and observe the properties of the environment and to translate these measurements into useful information to take action.
- We provide to commercial satellite companies that fly hosted payloads for the US military; it is important for the operators of these satellites to have timely knowledge of whether observed anomalies are caused by space weather effects, for the same reasons that the military needs this information.
- The current urgent trend in the satellite industry for miniaturization of the satellite hardware and use of the off the shelf components will make satellites more vulnerable to space weather. This is a growing market for the tools developed in this project and for our future products.
- Non-military commercial market has interest in our products, particularly satellite operators and manufacturers. Our tools can provide a deeper understanding of their spacecrafts’ vulnerabilities to space weather impacts, assisting in more robust design.
- For insurance market we provide for space weather impacts on satellites, which requires statistically supported identification of space weather impacts on satellites.
Research directions
Team
Philipa Njau is administrative PI and responsible for the project management and coordination between the involved institutions and consultants. Philipa Njau fulfilled all the requirement for PhD degree. She passed the oral defense and currently working on the final thesis that will be submitted shortly.
She has been involved in a number of government funded projects.
Dr. Quintin Schiller is an expert in data assimilation and its applications to predicting the near-Earth space weather environment. He is also an expert in magnetospheric data analysis and energetic particle telescopes, specializing in miniaturized electron and ion telescopes. After graduating from the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department at the University of Colorado in 2015, he currently is an author of over 40 peer-reviewed publications and has flown 4 space-flight instruments, with 3 more manifested to launch. He currently holds positions at Space Sciences Innovations, George Mason University, and the Space Science Institute. Prior to the pandemic he worked for 2 years at NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes helping build a 40MeV electron accelerator for medical pharmaceuticals, but now works fully remote from his home in Madison, Wisconsin.
Dr. Yuri Shprits is an expert in radiation belts and data assimilation. He is an author of over 125 peer reviewed publications related to the radiation belts. He is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers. Awarded by President Obama in July 2012 for radiation belt modelling and early career leadership. He is also a recipient of the Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Young Scientists, of the European Geosciences Union in 2011 and 2008, Young Investigator Proposal (YIP), AFOSR. He holds W3 position at the University of Potsdam and a section head at the German research center for geosciences. He is a US citizen currently living in Germany.
Dr. Kirill Strounine is an expert in data sciences and data assimilation. He has completed his PhD under data assimilation expert Prof. Michael Ghil and works in the data sciences industry.
He is familiar with the data assimilation and with industry standards for developing data-driven software. Kirill Strounine has background in physics and studied space physics with Prof. Richard Thorne during his PhD.