Utilising Heliospheric Images for Space Weather Prediction: A Data Assimilation Strategy

The STEREO mission has paved the way for the forthcoming Vigil mission, set to launch around 2030. Based on the extensive data archives from STEREO's wide-angle cameras, the heliospheric imagers (HI), we aim to assess the suitability of these data for real-time space weather prediction.This study focuses on modeling the evolution of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) as they progress towards Earth, employing STEREO-A and STEREO-B observations from Vigil's future vantage point, the L5 point of the Sun-Earth system, with the drag-based ensemble model ELEvoHI.Our investigation aims to determine to what extent incorporating additional HI data (as it would be received in real-time) improves the forecasting accuracy and its impact on the prediction lead time.