The fast -growing space – industry and the technologies society are increasingly dependent on – electric schedules, aviation and telecommunications – are all vulnerable for the same threat: space weather.
Space weather includes any variations in the space environment between the sun and the earth. A common type of space weather event is called an interplanetary coronal mass of ejecting.
These droppings are bundles of magnetic fields and particles that come from the sun. They can travel at speeds of up to 2,000 km per second and can cause geomagnetic storms.
They create beautiful Aurora displays – just like the northern lights that you can sometimes see in the air – but can also disrupt satellite operations, close the electric schedule and expose astronauts on board future crew missions on the moon and mars to deadly radiation doses.
I am a heliophysicist and the expert in the field of space weather and my team leads the development of a satellite constellation of the next generation called Swift, which is designed to predict potentially dangerous space events in advance. Our goal is to predict extreme space more accurately and earlier.
The dangers of space weather
Commercial interests now form a large part of the space exploration, aimed at space tourism, building satellite networks and working on extras from the moon and nearby asteroids.
Space is also a critical domain for military operations. Satellites offer essential capacities for military communication, surveillance, navigation and intelligence.
As countries such as the US become to be dependent on infrastructure in space, extreme space events pose a greater threat. Nowadays the space weather threatens up to US $ 2.7 trillion in assets worldwide.
In September 1859, the most powerful included space return event, known as the Carrington event, caused fires in North -America and Europe due to telegraph lines in supercharger.
In August 1972, another Carrington-like event almost hit the astronauts around the moon. The radiation dose could have been fatal. More recently, in February 2022, SpaceX 39 of his 49 newly launched Starlink -Satellites lost due to a moderate space return event.
Today’s Weather Monitors
Space Weather Services are highly dependent on satellites that check the solar wind, which consists of magnetic field lines and particles that come from the sun, and bring their observations back to the earth. Scientists can then compare these observations with historical data to predict space weather and to investigate how the earth can react to the observed changes in the solar wind.
The magnetic field of the earth protects naturally living beings and earth-orchored satellites against the most adverse effects of space weather. Extreme space weather events, however, can set back the magnetic shield of the earth – or in some cases shot back.
This process enables solar wind particles to make it in our protected environment – the magnetosphere – that exposes satellites and astronauts on board space stations to harsh conditions.
Most satellites that constantly follow the earth-bound space weather Orbite relatively close to the planet. Some satellites are positioned in a low track around the earth, about 161 km above the earth’s surface, while others are in a geosynchronous track, about 40,000 km away.
At these distances, the satellites remain within the protective magnetic shield of the earth and can reliably measure the response of the planet to the weather conditions of the planet. To study incoming solar wind more directly, researchers use extra satellites further upstream – hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the earth.
The US, the European Space Agency and India all operate space weather monitoring satellites that are placed around the L1 Lagrange point – almost 1,450,000 km from the earth – where the gravity forces of the sun and the earth balance. From this viewpoint, space weather monitors can offer a warning for incoming solar events up to 40 minutes in advance.
Voor warning for space weather
Increasing the warning time after 40 minutes – the current warning time – would help satellite operators, electric grid planners, flight directors, astronauts and space officers to better prepare for extreme space resources.
During geomagnetic storms, for example, the atmosphere is warmed up and expands, which increases the resistance on satellites in low earth. With sufficient advance warning, operators can update their drag calculations to prevent satellites from descending and burning out during these events. With the updated drag calculations, satellite operators can use the drive systems of the satellites to maneuver them higher in a job to maneuver the earth.
Airlines can change their routes to prevent passengers and staff from being exposed to high radiation doses during geomagnetic storms. And future astronauts on the way to or working on the moon or mars, who have no protection against these particles, can be warned in advance to take cover.
Aurora lovers would also appreciate it to have more time to reach their favorite viewing destinations.
The Space Weather Research Border
My team and I have developed a new satellite constellation of the space, called the Space Weather Investigation Frontier. Swift will place a space weather monitor beyond the L1 point for the first time, 1.3 million km from the earth. This distance would enable scientists to inform decision makers about any earth -bound weather events up to almost 60 minutes before arrival.
Satellites with traditional chemical and electric drive systems can keep a job for a long time at that location – further from the earth and closer to the sun. This is because they would have to burn fuel continuously to prevent gravity of the sun.
To tackle this problem, our team spent decades on designing and developing a new drive system for decades. Our solution is designed to achieve a distance that is closer to the sun than the traditional L1 point, and to reliably work more than a decade by using an abundant and reliable source – sunlight.
Swift would use a Fuelless forefront stowing system, called a Sun Sail to reach its job. A Sun Sail is a hair-thin reflective surface and simulate a very thin mirror-that includes about a third of a football field. It balances the power of light particles that come from the sun, pushing him away, with the gravity of the sun, which pulls him in.
While a sailboat creates the elevator created by wind that flows over his bent sails to move over water, a sunshine uses the momentum of photons from sunlight, reflected from its large, shiny sail, to push a spacecraft through the room. Both the sailboat and the Zonnezeil use the transfer of energy from their respective environments to stimulate movement without trusting traditional driving gases.
A Zonnezeil can enable Swift to enter an otherwise unstable Sub-L1 job without touching the risk of fuel.
NASA successfully launched its first Zonnezeil in 2010. This demonstration in the room, called Nanosail-D2, had a sail of 107 square meters and was placed in a low earth course. In the same year, the Japanese space agency launched a larger Solar Sail Mission, Ikaros, which used a 2,110 FT2 sail in the solar wind and successfully used Venus.
The Planetary Society and NASA followed by launching two sails in Low Earth Orbit: Lightsail, with an area of 344 FT2 and the advanced composite Solar Sail System, with an area of 860 FT2.
The Solar Sail Demonstration Mission of the Swift team, Solar Cruiser, will be equipped with a much larger sail – it will have an area of 17,793 FT2 and will be launched in 2029. At the beginning of last year we successfully deployed a quadrant of the sail on earth.
To transport it to the room, the team will carefully pack the sail in a small bus and pack tightly. The biggest challenge to overcome will be to put the sail once in space and use it to guide the satellite along his orbital path.
If successful, Solar Cruiser will free up the road for Swift’s Constellation of four satellites. The constellation would include one satellite that is equipped with sail propulsion, set to be placed in a job beyond L1, and three smaller satellites with chemical propulsion in a job on the L1 Lagrange point.
The satellites will be parked indefinitely on and outside L1 and collect data in the solar wind without interruption. Each of the four satellites can observe the solar wind of different locations, so that scientists can better predict how it can evolve before they reach the earth.
Because modern life depends more on space infrastructure, it can continue to invest in space weather forecast both space and the ground -based technologies.
Published on July 13, 2025
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