What is Space Weather?
Space weather ranks among the highest priority natural hazards.
It refers to changes in conditions on the Sun, in the solar wind, magnetosphere and ionosphere, which can affect operations and reliability of space and ground-based technological systems and threaten the health and life of humans.
Space Weather Impacts
Different systems are exposed to varying levels of risk depending on technical design, location and the type of space weather that can affect them
- Disruption of satellite systems
- Satellite failure
- Satellite orbital drag
Satellites
- Extreme radiation exposure that can lead to serious health consequences
Astronauts
- Disruption of avionics systems
- Crew & passengers radiation exposure
- Disruption to HF communications
Aviation
- Loss of GNSS services
- Disruption to transport and emergency services
Supply Chain
- Power blackouts
- Damage to grid infrastructure
- Disconnection of parts of power grids
Power Grids
- Disruptions in onboard computer systems
- Launch failure
Rocket Launchers
Why do you need to monitor space weather around your assets?
The main driver of space weather is the Sun. Solar activity and the resulting space weather vary day-to-day, seasonally, and over multi-year cycles. Irregular solar activity, including explosive eruptions called solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), can have a significant impact on the near-Earth space environment.
While better design can help protect satellites, test facilities cannot fully replicate the space environment, and unexpected environmental sensitivities still occur that can cause anomalies. Therefore, some measure of forecasting and warning of the space radiation environment is highly desirable. A reliable forecasting system like Mission Space’s has several benefits:
Quantify and identify the cause of an anomaly
For satellite operators and satellite design companies, a forecasting system that includes measurements and dynamic modeling should help identify the cause of an anomaly rapidly via the reconstruction of the space environment during the event, particularly for locations where there are no measurements.
Raise Alertness Level
For satellite operators, space weather monitoring system provides situation awareness that can be used to raise the alertness level of operators on the ground to deal with any potential problems, and given enough warning, to have more staff available.
Make Informed Decisions
Our system enables satellite operators to take action to mitigate the risk of service interruptions, for example, by switching off nonessential systems, by rescheduling orbit manoeuvres and software upgrades, and by ensuring spare capacity is immediately available to reroute communications traffic.
Mission Space system utilizes scientific and operational data from ground and space, including its detectors, to enhance existing data flows, state-of-the-art research models, and a distributed system of information and modeling that provides robustness.