Coronal and Heliospheric Modeling with WSA: Recent Updates and Applications

The Wang-Sheeley-Arge (WSA) model is a combined empirical and physics-based model for the solar corona and inner heliosphere, widely used in the heliophysics community for over two decades. In recent years the model has been updated to allow solar wind forecasting for satellites in non-Earth-like orbits, such as Parker Solar Probe (PSP) and Solar Orbiter (SolO). Here we will describe subsequent improvements to the model with the release of WSA version 5.3, including the incorporation of additional photospheric map sources. We will also present comparisons between coronal magnetic field models and solar wind forecasts based on a number of different photospheric map sources and discuss the variability of these results due to the uncertainty in the photospheric flux. Finally, we will discuss the application of the WSA model to forecasting for PSP and SolO.