Space weather can affect satellites in a number of different ways, from frying electronics to increasing drag in the atmosphere.
On Feb. 4, 2022, SpaceX launched 49 satellites as part of Elon Musk’s Starlink internet project, most of which burned up in the atmosphere days later. The cause of this more than US$50 million failure was a geomagnetic storm caused by the sun.
What causes space weather?The sun is always releasing a steady amount of charged particles into space. This is called the solar wind. Solar wind also carries with it the solar magnetic field. Sometimes, localized fluctuations on the sun will hurl unusually strong bursts of particles in a particular direction. If Earth happens to be in the path of the enhanced solar wind generated by one of these events and gets hit, you get a geomagnetic storm.
A magnetic shieldEmissions from the sun, including the solar wind, would be incredibly dangerous to any life form unlucky enough to be directly exposed to them. Thankfully, Earth’s magnetic field does a lot to protect humanity. When the atmosphere absorbs energy from magnetic storms, it heats up and expands upward. This expansion significantly increases the density of the thermosphere, the layer of the atmosphere that extends from about 50 miles to roughly 600 miles above the surface of the Earth. Higher density means more drag, which can be a problem for satellites.
Penetrating radiation or charged particles in the magnetosphere — even during mild geomagnetic storms — can also alter the output signal from electronic devices. This phenomenon can cause errors in any part of a spacecraft’s electronics system, and if the error occurs in something critical, the entire satellite can fail. Small errors are common and usually fixable, but total failures, though rare, do happen.
Some of the risks can be minimized by shielding electronics from radiation or developing materials that are more resistant to radiation. But there is only so much shielding that can be done in the face of a powerful geomagnetic storm.
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