IRENE-AE9/AP9/SPM News
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- Best Practices for Generating Space Environment Specifications with Modern Tools
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This page provides announcement of new releases, bug reports, and other information of interest to our users. For questions, contact the AE9/AP9/SPM Team at AFRL.RVBXR.AE9.AP9.Org.Mbx@us.af.mil.
- 4 March 2024: V1.58.001 release. This version adds a feature to generate variable timestep ephemeris, useful for elliptical orbits. It also simplifies specification of input database parameters, supports output of local magnetic field vector components with the 'Adiabatic' output option, and provides other API improvements. See the V1.58.001 release notes for more information.
- 1-2 March and 15 May 2023: IRENE Industry Days. Following the public release of AE9/AP9 v1.57, the model development team provided an overview of recent feature updates and a preview of expected changes in upcoming versions. Each industry day included a series of presentations followed by a Q&A / live demonstration (same presentations each day for different time zones). The presentations are available on the Documents page under “presentations”.
- 11 July 2022: V1.57.004 release. This version includes a kernel-based capability for dose calculations, replicating dose vs. depth results from SHIELDOSE2 but enabling faster calculations of these results. It also includes new features for accumulators, in particular a feature to perform logging of 'worst case' values for 'Boxcar' and 'Exponential Flux Average' accumulation modes. The software API is greatly expanded to include C and Python model- and application-level API methods, dependencies on third-party libraries are updated to more recent versions, and build instructions include support for additional types of Linux operating systems.
- 1 December 2017: V1.50.001 release. This version updates the AP9 and AE9 flux maps with data from the Van Allen Probes mission. It also adds proton data from HiLET and Azur, the latter being our first international data set. See the V1.50.001 release notes for more information and the download page to obtain the model.
- 23 January 2017: V1.35.001 release. This version introduces support of parallelized processing for Linux and 64-bit Windows platforms. It also includes a post-processing tool for merging electron and proton dose results to obtain percentile confidence levels and makes some changes to command line version input parameters, keyword/value inputs, and output filenaming conventions. See the V1.35.001 release notes for more information and the download page to obtain the model.
- 9 February 2016: V1.30.001 release. This version addresses the Monte Carlo issue affected AP9 and AE9 (see below). For information on the issue and verification of the fix see Summary of AP9 V1.20 Monte Carlo issue and its fix in AP9 V1.30. See the V1.30.001 release notes for more information and the download page to obtain the model.
- 14 October 2015: V1.20.004 release. This version fixes a software bug we have identified in the "IntegralPlasma" utility. This utility program, used by the GUI, adjusts the SPM outputs for integral fluxes when calculated in tandem with AE9/AP9 integral outputs. Prior to the fix, an error is erroneously signaled by the utility when processing more than five files of one species at one time, causing the GUI to report an error. The issue does not affect calculations of differential fluxes or doses, nor does it affect runs not using the plasma models. Release V1.20.004 includes the fix to the "IntegralPlasma" utility. See the V1.20.004 release notes for more information and the public downloads page to obtain the model.
We have also identified an issue in AP9 V1.20 (all versions) which leads to incorrect Monte Carlo results for very long mission runs (>2-4 years). There is no effect on AP9 mean and perturbed mean results. The issue stems from a numerical instability in the matrices that evolve the Monte Carlo dynamics leading to unrealistic increases in dynamical amplitudes. As a result, Monte Carlo quantities (e.g. means, medians and percentiles) may increase unrealistically after multi-year mission periods. A fix to this issue has been developed and will soon be released. For more information see 20151014_AFRL_AP9V120MCissue.pdf. - 20 April 2015: V1.20.003 release. This version fixes the software bug in the V1.20.002 release affecting GSM coordinates (see below).
- 13 April 2015: We have identified a software bug in the V1.20.002 release whereby input or output in GSM (Geocentric Solar Magnetospheric) coordinates is incorrectly treated as if in GEO (Geocentric Cartesian) coordinates. Calculations in other coordinate systems or from orbital elements/ephemerides are unaffected. This will be addressed in the next interim release.
- 13 March 2015: V1.20.002 release. This version incorporates the 2015 IGRF magnetic field model plus a bug fix over the last release (V1.20.001); details are in the V1.20.002 release notes. This version is also the first public release since V1.05.001 and thus is the first public version with updated flux maps for AE9, AP9 and SPM electrons and protons, plus several feature improvements, as described in the V1.20.001 release notes. As a public released version, the model may be obtained from our public download page (https://www.vdl.afrl.af.mil/programs/ae9ap9/downloads.php).