ESA Swarm mission after 10 years in Space: new opportunities through enhanced processors and data quality

On 22^nd November 2023 Swarm ESA’s Earth Explorer mission celebrated 10 years in Space, characterizing Earth’s geomagnetic, ionospheric and electric fields, for a better understanding of our planet’s interior and its environment. After a decade in orbit, the mission is still in excellent shape and continues to contribute to a wide range of scientific studies, from the core of our planet, via the mantle and the lithosphere, to the ionosphere and interactions with Solar wind, opening the door for many innovating applications largely beyond its original scope.

Moreover, the processing algorithms have been continuously improved since the beginning of the mission, to cope with the evolving needs of the scientific community, to keep providing excellent quality data and to maintain good instruments performances.

In April 2023 a “Fast” processing chain has been transferred to operations, providing Swarm L1B products with a minimum delay respect to the acquisition. This Fast data production adds significant value to Swarm mission’s scientific purposes and applications, making it eligible for monitoring Space Weather phenomena, modelling and nowcasting the evolution of several geomagnetic and ionospheric events.

This work provides an overview of the Swarm enhanced data processing chain, instruments performances, Fast chain applications and upcoming evolutions, together with other innovative Swarm-based data products and services.