41
votes
Accepted
Which LEO satellite lost over 30 km of altitude in the geomagnetic storm of 13-14 March 1989?
This appears to be an error that has propagated from paper to paper over the years. Examining the original paper cited by all these other authors, "Effects of the March 1989 Solar Activity" by Allen ...
- 189k
31
votes
Accepted
How to check, if there is currently an increased solar activity?
Looks pretty darned quiet to me right now:
You can find that here, along with other measures of space weather.
By the way, cosmic rays and solar activity are two entirely different things. Cosmic ...
- 58.4k
30
votes
Which LEO satellite lost over 30 km of altitude in the geomagnetic storm of 13-14 March 1989?
update: There has been a new analysis of "catastrophic" altitude drops during solar events. The largest drop cited is about 440 meters.
NASA Goddard feature: Solar Superstorms of the Past ...
- 151k
20
votes
What are the long term effects of Space Weathering on man-made materials?
There are four(ish) primary contributors to "space weathering" of any material (natural or synthetic) in space:
Micrometeoroid and debris environment: This is the result of small stuff ...
- 4,504
15
votes
What are the long term effects of Space Weathering on man-made materials?
The Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) was a Shuttle-launched and -retrieved satellite designed to investigate exactly this.
Here is the LDEF in space.
It was covered in trays of different ...
- 189k
12
votes
Accepted
Has NORAD ever experienced a catastrophic event and "lost track of" a bunch of objects?
Yes, during the geomagnetic storm of March 1989, NORAD lost track of thousands of objects:
During the great geomagnetic storm of 13-14 March 1989, tracking of thousands of space objects was lost ...
- 23.8k
7
votes
Accepted
If a solar flare happened during a total lunar eclipse, would the Earth block the flare from hitting the moon? And for how long?
If a solar flare happened during a total lunar eclipse, would the Earth block the flare from hitting the moon?
Probably not, for several reasons.
The high frequency electromagnetic radiation from a ...
- 77.4k
7
votes
Accepted
How was this image of the sun taken and what does it show?
The composite image cannot be made from our standard jpegs as they are log-scaled to improve the contrast. You put the linearly-scaled data into the color channels of an sRBG image and then log scale ...
- 86
6
votes
Accepted
Why didn't SpaceX see that geomagnetic storm coming? Was this a fluke or could this happen more frequently in the future? (R.I.P. 40 lost starlinks)
I think one possible reason that they didn’t see it coming was that the it was extreme ultraviolet photons that only took roughly 8 minutes to travel from the sun and to start heating the thermosphere....
- 332
5
votes
Accepted
How do solar flares and coronal mass ejections create proton storms?
How do solar flares and coronal mass ejections create proton storms?
The proper answer to this questions fills multiple books and they all still end with lots of questions, but I will try to give a ...
- 2,144
5
votes
Accepted
What are the differences between various solar weather terms?
Coronal Mass Ejection is a large ejection of mass from the sun. These ejections are so large that they increase the particle density of the solar wind and can be very dangerous to spacecraft. The ...
- 6,300
5
votes
Has space weather ever impacted spacecraft launch schedules?
In 2014 a solar flare delayed the launch of a private cargo delivery to the International Space Station by 24 hours due to concerns over space radiation.
The event occurred as the commercial ...
- 13.3k
4
votes
Accepted
Why put SunRISE in the graveyard? Why will it "fly slightly above geosynchronous orbit"?
Why will the SunRISE mission "fly slightly above geosynchronous orbit"?
There are few advantages and practical reasons for doing so. The first advantage is trying to minimize Earth-based ...
- 2,144
3
votes
Why put SunRISE in the graveyard? Why will it "fly slightly above geosynchronous orbit"?
SunRISE will deploy a constellation of cubesat spacecraft which together will synthesize a radio-frequency antenna large enough to give the angular resolution required to study the solar phenomena of ...
- 1,162
3
votes
How can a solar storm be predicted?
Solar flares travel at about 2000 km/s. Radio travels at 300,000 km/s, so a spacecraft at L1 (1.5 million km out) like DISCOVR gives about 12 minutes of warning when the solar flare reaches it.
...
- 130k
3
votes
How can a solar storm be predicted?
You may be asking about a couple of different things here.
1 Events at the surface of the sun
Events at the Sun itself may or may not head in the direction of the Earth, but this is step one of a ...
- 10.1k
3
votes
Can VLF be used to create a Mars barrier?
I thought about this after the article popped up too! From what I could discern... The VLF just pushes out on the Van Allen Belts... not necessarily adding to them... but keeping them expanded to a ...
- 31
2
votes
Accepted
Can VLF be used to create a Mars barrier?
Can VLF be used to create a Mars barrier?
The short answer is no because Mars does not have an intrinsic magnetic field, thus no uniform dipole magnetic field to generate a magnetosphere. I wrote an ...
- 2,144
2
votes
Can "space weather" refer to deep space environments or only to Earth's (or another planet's) upper atmosphere?
Can the term "space weather" refer to the environment in deep space, or is it only in reference to Earth's (or another planet's) upper atmosphere?
Just a quick addition to the already ...
- 2,144
2
votes
Accepted
Can "space weather" refer to deep space environments or only to Earth's (or another planet's) upper atmosphere?
Yes, "space weather" can be applied to any region outside of any planet or atmosphere, and outside the sun. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin. (NOAA) maintains a Space Weather Prediction ...
- 18.4k
2
votes
How can a solar storm be predicted?
Satellites like DSCOVR are used to predict solar storms.
No they are not. Spacecraft cannot predict solar storms. They can inform a user that something is coming toward Earth, but they cannot ...
- 2,144
2
votes
How risky is launching a rocket during a geomagnetic and solar radiation storm?
Somewhat risky: SpaceX announced on 2022-02-08 that they lost 40 Starlink satellites because a geomagnetic storm increased drag at the orbit altitude (just 210 km just after launch) so much that the ...
- 14.8k
1
vote
Why put SunRISE in the graveyard? Why will it "fly slightly above geosynchronous orbit"?
Partial answer:
Why "slightly above" rather than at? Why not slightly below?
not directly related to SunRISE but https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20130000278/downloads/20130000278.pdf ...
- 12.6k
1
vote
Why put SunRISE in the graveyard? Why will it "fly slightly above geosynchronous orbit"?
For the specific part about why not in GEO, the short answer is because it doesn't need to be in GEO. Given the undesirability of a satellite collision in GEO, anything that doesn't need to be in GEO ...
- 1,705
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible