Plasmasphere Ionosphere Thermosphere Integrated Research Environment and Access services: a Network of Research Facilities (PITHIA-NRF)

A new European project, funded in the Horizon 2020 framework, has started in April 2021 with the RMI as one of twenty-three partners. The PITHIA-NRF project aims at building a European distributed network that integrates observing facilities, data processing tools and prediction models dedicated to ionosphere, thermosphere and plasmasphere research. For the first time, PITHIA-NRF integrates on a European scale, and opens up to all European researchers, key national and regional research infrastructures such as EISCAT, LOFAR, Ionosondes and Digisondes, GNSS receivers, Doppler sounding systems, riometers, and VLF receivers, ensuring optimal use and joint development. PITHIA-NRF is designed to provide organized access to experimental facilities, FAIR data, standardized data products, training and innovation services. Furthermore, the project facilitates drastically research advances in the field of upper atmosphere and near-Earth space, through the integration of data collections from satellite missions and results from key prediction models that can be accessed by scientific users for join exploitation with the data collected from the research infrastructures of the network.

Funding: Horizon 2020 Project Ref. No. EU-101007599, doi:10.3030/101007599