Due to changes in NASA’s reporting requirements, reports from this point forward will be annual reports (with this particular report serving as a 2-year report to cover the 2025 and 2026 period).
Major Goals and Objectives
LASP will continue to coordinate the PyHC. We have held ten plus community meetings, consisting of a mix of in-person, hybrid, and virtual meetings. These have resulted in a mission statement, a set of written standards for Python software projects, the formation of new working groups to address specific topics, a PyHC-related workshop to discuss the future of the community and its technical priorities, the 2022 and 2024 PyHC summer schools, and a series of meeting reports, all of which are available on the pyhc.org website. We will continue to organize meetings on a bi-annual (twice-yearly) basis, one fully virtual and one hybrid.
The PyHC leadership team consists of the PyHC Lead and the PyHC Technical Lead. The PyHC Lead is the main point of contact, and initiator/lead orchestrator, of all PyHC-sponsored activities. They are also the main source of PyHC outreach, travelling to local and international conferences to grow PyHC. The PyHC Technical Lead supports Python projects in the community by coordinating technical efforts, advising developers on code standards and contribution to community repositories, aiding the PyHC Lead, and coordinating educational efforts. Both individuals will be employed at LASP.
The PyHC Lead will:
hold telecons and meetings to:
improve support and visibility for existing and new Python libraries used by multiple projects;
identify other projects which could benefit from either conversion to Python, or development of APIs to allow use by Python;
promote best practices for documentation and testing, particularly of code submitted by the community;
organize and workshop community-generated ideas for package improvement, interoperability, and integration (e.g., hack use case examples for the PyHC Gallery).
organize and hold the regular (approximately bi-weekly) telecons;
coordinate the spring 2025 and spring 2026 fully virtual meetings, and the fall 2025 and fall 2026 hybrid meetings in Boulder and online (to allow participants unable to travel to participate);
work with the PyHC Technical Lead other leaders in the PyHC to plan the PyHC 2026 Summer School (see Summer School section for more details);
attend AGU 2025 and 2026 to coordinate a Python session and publicize PyHC’s efforts. The PyHC Lead will solicit presentations from the software teams involved in this project and encourage interested outside entities to submit them;
attend several relevant conferences, workshops, and meetings to publicize PyHC’s efforts, improve communication with those outside of PyHC, and foster current and potential future collaborations with PyHC;
work with PyHC package leads to determine who will attend science-focused meetings (SHINE, CEDAR, GEM) each year, as well as other related meetings (e.g., US-RSE annual meetings and SciPy meetings). Selections will be made based on need, relevance, and that year’s meeting themes;
work with the PyHC membership to continue improving our outreach–outside of travel–to the scientific community (e.g., through social media, increased PyHC Blog use, improved Gallery examples, putting PyHC updates in a newsletter, and virtual office hours);
assist the PyHC Technical Lead in maintaining and improving the pyhc.org website; and
continue to maintain regular contact with NASA HDRL, consisting of quarterly status reports, and one-off meetings as necessary. The pyhc.org website will be updated to contain any recommendations and standards developed by the group, documenting all meetings and providing links to member projects and useful resources.
The PyHC Technical Lead will:
serve as science and software technical point of contact for PyHC and community building;
develop and maintain the list of compliance criteria for code inclusion or association with PyHC;
work with PyHC community developers to evaluate code submitted to PyHC for standards compliance;
help new community members learn how to contribute code;
maintain and update the PyHC Gallery page;
help to establish the registration of PyHC software and to assign DOIs to code, as well as create a page for DOIs on the PyHC website;
maintain the PyHC website, as well as improve upon the organization, discoverability, and understanding of projects (e.g., working with community developers to create a table of package routines/descriptions and areas of “help wanted” in code), populate the Blog section with project updates, intros, new features, and other relevant information, and make it easier to find information such as the standards document, meeting details, and project tutorials (video and gallery examples);
assist in coordinating and running a PyHC 2026 Summer School;
co-lead and organize efforts around the Science Platforms Coordination IHDEA working group alongside key members in the Heliophysics and space physics disciplines;
develop and expand the reach of PyHC-Chat (a ChatGPT4-powered AI bot that will aid in the discovery, findability, and understanding of how to leverage PyHC packages; and
maintain and improve upon the PyHC common software environment.
Other Potential Tasks for the Technical Lead:
assist in organizing PyHC telecons;
assist in organizing bi-annual PyHC meetings;
assist PyHC Lead in outreach efforts;
attend meetings to present PyHC initiatives, give tutorials, engage scientists and developers on techniques and opportunities;
coordinate tutorial sessions at community meetings or conferences; and
communicate with other related Python efforts.
PyHC 2027 Winter School
Due to funding timelines for participant travel support, the PyHC Leadership team made the choice to move the originally planned PyHC 2026 Summer School to January of 2027, as a winter school. The PyHC 2027 winter school will build off the success of the 2022 and 2024 summer schools. The PyHC Summer School series presents a unique opportunity to connect with the broader Heliophysics and space weather community and communicate the benefits of leveraging PyHC’s open-source Python ecosystem. In particular, the ability to get the up-and-coming generation involved in PyHC activities and working with PyHC packages ensures PyHC’s utility, sustainability, and longevity. The PyHC 2027 Winter School will include PyHC core project (and other relevant PyHC packages) introductions and demonstrations, followed by example science use cases that meeting attendees can hack together using PyHC packages. We will continue with the PyHC challenge ladder that was successful in the PyHC 2024 summer school. Lastly, we will also continue to partner with HelioCloud (https://heliocloud.org/), as well include a day to present several HDRL resources to winter school participants.
The result of the Summer School is increasing the users–and potential contributors–of PyHC packages, thus promoting PyHC package sustainability and maintenance, as well as PyHC outreach efforts. The PyHC Lead will coordinate, organize, plan, and work with other key PyHC leadership to create and implement the PyHC 2027 Winter School. The PyHC Technical Lead will assist as needed in preparing technical materials (e.g., a web page for the summer school, helping organize technical topics, updating the PyHC Challenge Ladder exercises, or getting Python environments set up for meeting attendees). Like the PyHC 2022 and 2024 summer schools, we intend to have all packages upload all demos and tutorials to a HelioCloud instance. This ensures that students can avoid the dependency issues of installing PyHC software locally, providing summer school attendees with a robust, standardized platform which works “out of the box”, and allow them to focus on learning instead of debugging.
Accomplishments Under Goals
1) Major Activities
PyHC 2027 Winter School Several meetings have been held now with the PyHC Leadership and members of the PyHC core packages to discuss the next iteration in the PyHC summer school series (this time, as a winter school rendition). Dates are now set for Tuesday, Jan 5th - Friday, Jan 8th, 2027, to be held at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. Due to the winter school being held closer to the holidays, we chose to shorten the school from five to four days, where the first day will be a deep dive into various HDRL resources available to the community, days 2 and 3 will focus on single package demos/tutorials, and day 4 will focus on hackathon style work through package interoperability and challenge ladder exercises (guided by PyHC core package leads and PyHC leadership).
AGU 2026 The PyHC Leadership Team will attend the annual AGU 2026 conference in San Francisco, CA to attend and present at sessions relevant to the PyHC effort, as well as lead the PyHC poster session. The conference runs Monday, December 7th - Friday, December 11th, 2026 at the George R. Moscone Convention Center. The PyHC Lead will present on the HSSI as a contributed talk/poster ,”The Heliophysics Software Search Interface: Improving Findability, Discoverability, Accessibility, Citability, and Searchability of Heliophysics Software”, and the PyHC Summer School series as an invited poster, “The PyHC Summer School Series: Teaching the Next Generation of Heliophysicists Through Open-source Python Software”. The PyHC Tech Lead will present “Creating AI Agents for PyHC with Claude Code, Codex, and Beyond” during the PyHC poster session. Another LASP employee will also travel to AGU on the PyHC grant, to present in the PyHC poster session on their experiences and results from leading the HSSI usability testing sessions.
The PyHC poster session date is not yet announced, though the session had nine submitted abstracts. This number is yet again lower than prior years, likely to the continuing difficult travel funding environment, particularly amongst NASA employees who tend to make up a large amount of PyHC participation at AGU.
DASH/IHDEA 2026 Joint Meeting DASH/IHDEA 2026 will take place October 4-9, 2026, organized by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) in Dublin, Ireland. The PyHC Lead has been involved in the planning committee for the joint meeting, as well as coordinating once more the participant travel support grant. The PyHC Lead will present on both HSSI status at DASH and PyHC working group updates at IHDEA (namely, overall PyHC updates since DASH/IHDEA 2025). The PyHC Tech Lead is leading two sessions focused on AI usage in Heliophysics at DASH and presenting an update on the Science Platforms Coordination IHDEA working group. One additional LASP employee, an undergraduate student, will travel to DASH/IHDEA 2026 to attend and create an out-brief of the DASH/IHDEA meeting from a student perspective. This will be presented to the PyHC at an upcoming bi-weekly telecon.
PyHC Spring 2026 Meeting The PyHC Spring 2026 meeting took place online on Zoom, Tuesday, May 19th - Thursday, May 21st, 2026, from 9 - 11 AM MT each days. Sessions were recorded and uploaded to the PyHC YouTube (link) and linked from the meeting’s web page (link). Specific topics included: PyHC project updates, AI and PyHC usage review, an HSSI Day (with presentations on updates and plans, as well as time for questions and discussion with PyHC developers), a guest presentation on AI Assistants for Science, PHEP votes for PHEP 4 (second vote; passed), and a discussion on how to improve future bi-annual meeting attendance.
AGU 2025 The PyHC Leadership Team attended the annual AGU 2025 conference in New Orleans, LA to attend and present at sessions relevant to the PyHC effort, as well as lead the PyHC poster session. The conference ran Monday, December 15th - Friday, December 19th, 2025 at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. The PyHC Lead did not present additional talks/posters at AGU 2025 due to time intensive personal commitments. The PyHC Tech Lead also did not present extra presentations. The undergraduate student HSSI developer travelled to AGU 2025 through the PyHC grant and presented on the HSSI, particularly as it related to PyHC packages, “The Heliophysics Software Search Interface” (IN21B).
The PyHC poster session took place Wednesday, December 17th, 2025 from 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM CST. Six abstracts were submitted and accepted, of which five were able to be present day of and present. This number is lower than prior years, likely to the continuing difficult travel funding environment, particularly amongst NASA employees who tend to make up a large amount of PyHC participation at AGU.
PyHC Fall 2025 Meeting The PyHC Fall 2025 Meeting took place online on Zoom, Tuesday, November 18th - Thursday, November 20th, 2025, from 9 - 11 AM MT each day. Sessions were recorded and uploaded to the PyHC YouTube (link) and linked from the meeting’s web page (link). Specific topics included: PyHC core project updates, a US-RSE 2025 meeting out brief, a HelioData update, an overview of the Heliophysics Foundational Model, an overview of AI for PyHC activities completed by the PyHC Technical Lead, an annual PHEP 1 review, votes for PHEPs 3 (PyHC Python & Upstream Package Support Policy; passed second vote) and 5 (PyHC Tiering; passed first vote), overview of PHEPs in progress (namely, ones related to PyHC standards) and a brief wrap-up. Meeting report Zenodo link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20433569.
DASH/IHDEA 2025 Joint Meeting DASH/IHDEA 2025 took place October 20-24, 2025, organized by SwRI in San Antonio, TX. The PyHC Lead was involved in the planning committee for the joint meeting, as well as coordinating the participant travel support grant. The PyHC Lead presented on the HSSI at DASH, as well as giving updates on the PyHC IHDEA working group (focused on the PyHC PHEP process and current status). The PyHC Tech Lead co-led a session at DASH on ML and LLM Applications in Heliophysics, as well as gave a Science Platforms Coordination working group update at IHDEA. Two additional LASP employees travelled to DASH/IHDEA 2025 on the PyHC grant to create and present an out-brief from the meeting at a PyHC telecon and chair/lead a session at DASH that was heavily related to PyHC’s goals. Talks were archived on Zenodo for DASH (link) and IHDEA (link). The DASH/IHDEA meeting report is available through Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/records/19472859.
PyHC Spring 2025 Meeting The PyHC Spring 2025 Meeting took place online on Zoom, Mon, June 2nd - Thurs, June 5th, 2025, from 9 - 11 AM MT each day. Sessions were recorded and uploaded to the PyHC YouTube (link) and linked from the meeting’s web page (link). Specific topics included: PyHC core and other project updates, a demo on using uv to create virtual environments and set up Python projects, a CloudCatalog overview (with a demo), updates from the PyHC Tech Lead, updates from the Science Platforms Coordination team, HSSI updates and vocabulary working session with PyHC package leads, a presentation on PySPEDAS’s experience with DOI Minting, discussions surrounding current PHEPs, a PyHC User Survey revisit, and wrap-up. Meeting report Zenodo link: https://zenodo.org/records/20418815.
2) Specific Objectives
Held telecons as schedules were able:
Telecons in 2025
PyHC user survey revisit
CloudCatalog overview
pyrfu overview
SAMMI overview
HSSI progress and submission/vocabulary working sessions
Open Software at NASA from the Science Data Officer for the SMD of NASA
PyHC repo template and PyHC environment welcome page updates
New package submission review pitch
New project ideas
HTM intro roulette session
EUVpy and SunPy HTM updates and overview
None in 2025 in November and December due to the DASH/IHDEA 2025 joint meeting, the PyHC Fall 2025 Meeting, and the annual AGU 2025 conference.
Several telecons held so far in 2026:
A DASH conference overview from Veronica Martinez
A pre-commit tutorial given by Nick Murphy
A “show and tell” telecon with updates on PyHC GitHub Actions and the Heliophysics Software Search Interface (HSSI; link) updates since the fall 2025 meeting given by Shawn Polson and Isaiah Smith
Hacking session for PHEPs
AI and PyHC Best Practices
Nox tutorial
pyIntensityFeatures
Additional tooling around CCSDSPy, SPaC-Kit
Prototype of the SPEDAS Agent and the accompanying SPEDAS Agent Kit
MadrigalWeb
Successfully continued to keep the PyHC website up to date with the following improvements:
Including Spring 2025, Fall 2025, and Spring 2026 meeting materials on the PyHC website, alongside meetings reports (Spring 2026 in the works).
Adding in approved PHEPs: PHEP 3 (PyHC Python and Upstream Package Support Policy) and PHEP 4 (PyHC Package Tiering) to the PyHC site under Documents/PyHC Enhancement Proposals (PHEPs): https://pyhc.org/docs/pheps/
Added in new projects as GitHub PRs were reviewed and approved by the PyHC Tech Lead
The Science Platforms Coordination Working Group has completed some major milestones over the period of this grant:
In September and October 2025, the group reached a major milestone of deploying environments via a 2i2c JupyterHub for the first time for attendees of ML-Helio & DASH/IHDEA, respectively. However, during this report’s period in November 2025, the hub was decommissioned due to lack of maintenance funding past those specific workshops. The monthly tag-ups in November and December 2025 were cancelled due to other meetings and holiday schedules. In January 2026, the group had a meeting that revolved around deciding the best methods to cite/share work done in our environments. Later meetings have focused on preparing for the upcoming DASH/IHDEA 2026 joint meeting in Dublin, Ireland.
Other activities/tasks mentioned under the roles for the PyHC Lead and PyHC Technical Lead tend to depend on the needs of the community from quarter to quarter, and thus, although not always done, are also not considered “unmet goals”.
3) Significant Results/Key Outcomes
The PyHC bi-annual meeting series remained a fully virtual meeting to accommodate the increase in scientific conference travel in the fall, as well as the ongoing issues with federal funding for travel.
4) Other Achievements
Successfully passed PHEP 3 (second vote), PHEP 4 (second vote) and PHEP 5 (first vote), furthering our PyHC’s goals to set and maintain community-appropriate standards.
Upgraded the PyHC environment to Python 3.12 (per PHEP 3) and tested a fully SPEC 0-compliant version (and made GitHub issues to address issues, e.g., updates such as switching to uv from pip)
Worked with the SpacePy package lead, Jon Niehof, to fix the Kamodo package pip install issues (a longstanding issue)
Updated the PyHC stand-alone standards document and minted a new DOI (link)
Continued working with the HSSI team to incorporate PyHC developer feedback on the resource submission form and overall site. Further enhanced PyHC package discoverability through creating newly designed landing pages with embedded JSON-LD for discoverability and connections with other important Heliophysics resources in publications (SciX) and data (HelioData), as well as submitting new PyHC packages to the HSSI and enhanced metadata for existing submissions (through manual submissions as well with the new HSSI Metadata Orchestrator AI tool).
Plans for Next Reporting Period to Accomplish Goals and Objectives
The PyHC Lead and PyHC Technical Lead will continue to coordinate the PyHC and associated activities as stated in the Major Goals and Objectives section. In particular, the PyHC Leadership team will plan for how to handle the PyHC fall 2026 meeting (whether to hold or skip due to the large volume of meetings this fall), continue coordinating the PyHC 2027 Winter School, coordinate the PyHC poster session at the annual AGU 2026 conference, and the typical bi-weekly meetings, website updates, and continue HSSI maintenance work/meetings and Science Platforms Coordination Working group meetings.