Divert power to shields ? the solar maximum is coming | Machines ...

Over the past few months our planet has been impacted by an increasing number of solar explosions that have erupted from the sun?s surface.

Even though next year?s predicted solar maximum ? the period of greatest activity in the sun?s 11-year cycle ? is expected to be smaller than its predecessor a decade ago, the impact on society over the coming months could be worse than in the past.

The main reason for this is that there has been an increase in society?s dependence on space-based services that are severely influenced by these disturbances.

The effect that space weather has on our everyday lives resides in our reliance on technology, in particular electricity grids, radio communications and satellite-based services.

While our reliance on electric power is obvious, our reliance on radio communications may not be.

Difficult positions

By ?radio communications? I don?t just mean walkie-talkies and two-way radios. Military organisations around the world, including Australia?s defence forces, heavily utilise ground-based radar surveillance for routine border protection, and have done so since the end of the second world war.

An additional aspect of our current technology that is strongly influenced by space weather events is satellite communications. This not only includes both satellite phones and TV broadcasting, but also satellite positioning services, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS).

The direct effects of space weather events on our satellite communications are twofold:

1) Satellites are subjected to high radiation doses from the space environment that can cause hardware faults and failures.

2) Satellite-transmitted radio signals are manipulated by the layer of partially ionised gas in Earth?s upper atmosphere ? the ionosphere.

One example in which satellites succumbed to the sun?s wrath was the loss of two Canadian telecommunications satellites that were subjected to an intense geomagnetic disturbance in 1994. The satellites were replaced at a cost of about US$400 million.

Earth?s ionosphere is a dominant source of error in GPS positioning due to its effects on radio signals passing through the atmosphere. The commercial ?SATNAVs?, and more recently smartphones, that people commonly use for navigation across town are accurate to within a few tens of metres, and therefore a drop in accuracy using these devices during geomagnetic storms may not be obvious.

But industries that conduct high-precision (centimetre-level) positioning operations, such as surveying and exploration mining, are strongly impacted by space weather disturbances.

Drag and drop

A less direct space weather effect on our technological infrastructure is the dramatically increased level of atmospheric drag experienced by low-Earth orbiting satellites as the upper atmosphere swells due to the increased heating during geomagnetic storms.

Low-Earth orbit satellites reside (generally speaking) at altitudes lower than 2,000km and a large portion of those are Earth Observation Satellites (or EOS for short).

Source: http://machineslikeus.com/news/divert-power-shields-solar-maximum-coming

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