THE FIRST REAL-TIME WORLDWIDE IONOSPHERIC PREDICTIONS NETWORK - AN ADVANCE IN SUPPORT OF SPACEBORNE EXPERIMENTATION, ONLINE MODEL VALIDATION, AND SPACE WEATHER

We report on the first realtime ionospheric predictions network and it s capabilities to ingest a global database and forecast F-layer charac teristics and ''in situ'' electron densities along the track of an orb iting spacecraft. A global network of ionosonde stations reported arou nd-the-clock observations of F-region heights and densities, and an on -line library of models provided forecasting capabilities. Each model was tested against the incoming data; relative accuracies were interco mpared to determine the best overall fit to the prevailing conditions; and the best-fit model was used to predict ionospheric conditions on an orbit-to-orbit basis for the 12-hour period following a twice-daily model test and validation procedure. It was found that the best-fit m odel often provided averaged (i.e., climatologically-based) accuracies better than 5% in predicting the heights and critical frequencies of the F-region peaks in the latitudinal domain of the TSS-1R flight path . There was a sharp contrast however, in model-measurement comparisons involving predictions of actual, unaveraged, along-track densities at the 295 km orbital altitude of TSS-1R In this case, extrema in the fi rst-principle models varied by as much as an order of magnitude in den sity predictions, and the best-fit models were found to disagree with the ''in situ'' observations of Ne by as much as 140%. The discrepanci es are interpreted as a manifestation of difficulties in accurately an d self-consistently modeling the external controls of solar and magnet ospheric inputs and the spatial and temporal variabilities in electric fields, thermospheric winds, plasmaspheric fluxes, and chemistry.