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In the News
You would be surprised how often the impacts of space weather make their way into the news media! Visit the growing Newspaper Archive of over 200 reports from newspapers since 1859 that describe previous impacts of solar storms.
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A sampling of news stories about space weather impacts:
May 2, 2006 Scientists ponder space superstorm. The implications stemming from a geomagnetic superstorm akin to the one that occurred in 1859 would be economically devastating given our reliance upon satellites. That's the view of Sten Odenwald of the QSS Corporation based at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Odenwald's satellite economic modeling work was melded with historical aspects of the 1859 storm, researched by NASA Goddard scientist, Jim Green. That 1859 event extended over a period from Aug. 28 through to Sept. 3. One impact back then: A significant portion of the world's 140,000 miles of telegraph lines were unusable for a number of hours. Now, jump to today's satellite-linked society. Taking a statistical approach is probably the only way to get a global handle on the economic impact, Odenwald told SPACE.com. "Our satellites have collectively shown themselves to be incredibly robust against major failures. Typically during the last solar activity cycle- Cycle 23- only a few satellites seemed to suffer debilitating damage to their ability to operate profitably," he said. However, Odenwald advised, Earth did not experienced the kinds of space weather conditions expected for a major "superstorm" like the one in 1859. Odenwald projects billions of dollars of lost GEO satellite profit during an 1859-caliber superstorm. The model he has used to reach ballpark numbers includes a realistic treatment of how leased transponders are actually shifted to neighboring satellites from failing "host" satellites. The estimated profit loss tallies about $30 billion, Odenwald said. That figure is expected to climb higher as he mixes in various types of catastrophic satellite anomalies. Future work will include collateral economic impacts, pushing the profit loss upwards of $70 billion and higher, Odenwald suggested. "The GEO satellites themselves generate about $97 billion in revenue each year. A superstorm may well eat up most of that revenue for at least a few years."
January 18, 2005 Mars instrument to assess astronaut radiation risk. An instrument that will characterize the radiation at the surface of Mars has been selected by NASA for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). The mission, part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, will explore the viability of the surface of the red planet as a potential habitat for past or present life. For this purpose, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is developing the Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD, to characterize the broad spectrum of radiation at the surface. The investigation will determine the radiation hazards faced by astronauts on Mars. "Understanding the space radiation environment is the single most important challenge to preparing for future human exploration of Mars," says Dr. Donald M. Hassler, RAD principal investigator and section manager in the SwRI Space Studies Department. "We need to understand the radiation input at the Martian surface so we can design shelters, habitats and spacesuits with sufficient shielding to protect astronauts."
January 12, 2005 Radiation Shields: Radiation Protection for Moon-based Astronauts. A team of researchers is looking to the moon to develop the tools future astronauts may need to ward off potentially life-threatening levels of space radiation. Currently mid-way through their NASA-funded study, the researchers are working to determine whether a set of electrically charged shield spheres atop 40-meter masts could deflect radiation from a populated moonbase. If it proves possible, such a radiation-proof screen - called an electrostatic shield - could protect astronauts from the long-lasting, and possibly fatal, radiation hazards of spaceflight beyond the Earth's magnetic field. "The electrostatic radiation shield is a pretty simple idea," said the study's co-principal investigator John Lane, an applications scientist with ASRC Aerospace Corp. at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). "We're concerned about charged particle radiation." That radiation, high-energy protons and electrons spewed out by the Sun during massive solar storms or traversing the universe as galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), are the main hazard targeted by Lane, his colleagues. ASRC researcher Charles Buhler is leading the study, which is a Phase 1 project funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC).
May 31, 2004 Pregnancy, Airline Travel and Radiation Exposure. Occasional airline travel by pregnant women generally poses little risk of radiation exposure to developing fetuses, but pregnant pilots, flight attendants, air marshals, couriers, and frequent business travelers can receive radiation exposures that exceed current recommendations if they do not modify their work schedules, according to a current commentary in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Physicians can assure pregnant women who are concerned about radiation risks during flight that during casual travel under normal solar conditions the radiation risk to the fetus is negligible. However, there is an irregular space-weather phenomenon called a solar-particle event. These are infrequent and usually short-lived, but they can significantly change the radiation dose while in flight to levels that can easily surpass the 1 mSv exposure limit, even for a single trip. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Space Environment Center have recently introduced an alert system that sends airlines a warning at the start of a significant solar-particle event. The alert is specifically intended to limit the radiation dose received by pregnant women who are already in the air by redirecting the aircraft to a safer altitude.
February 26, 2004 Space Station Gets a Figurehead as Radiation Dummy Attached Outside. It may not be suitable for crash tests, but a dummy now rides on the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) It's mission: to give scientists a better idea of the radiation bombarding astronauts during spacewalks. The dummy, a mock-human of natural bone, simulated organs and synthetic skin, was installated on the outside of the station's Russian Zvezda module during a spacewalk today by Expedition 8 crewmembers Michael Foale and Alexander Kaleri. Today's spacewalk is the first time the ISS will be left unattended during an EVA. Rigged with numerous radiation detectors both inside and out, the dummy will spend a year on the space station's surface before being returned to Earth. The European Space Agency (ESA) experiment has named the dummy Matroshka since its layered nature is reminiscent of the famed matroishka Russian dolls. The German Aerospace Centre (DLR) is leading the Matroshka experiment for ESA.
January 20, 2004 Surviving Space: Risks to Humans on the Moon and Mars. Any trip beyond Earth orbit will involve radiation threats not faced by residents of the International Space Station, which sits inside the planet's magnetic field. A 2-1/2-year trip to Mars, including six months of travel time each way, would expose an astronaut to nearly the lifetime limit of radiation allowed under NASA guidelines. The Moon, with no atmosphere, is more dangerous than the surface of Mars. Lunar forays will have to be brief unless expensive shielded habitats are built. Mission planners knew the Apollo astronauts would be at grave risk if a strong solar flare occurred during a mission. The short duration of each trip was a key to creating favorable odds. "A big solar event during one of those missions could have been catastrophic," said Cary Zeitlin, a radiation expert at the National Space Biomedical Research Institute at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "The risk was known. They gambled a bit."
January 16, 2004 Marshall works on astronauts radiation shield. Scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center are working on a key problem of sending people on long-term trips into space - protecting them from dangerous doses of radiation. NASA has worked for years on protecting astronauts from radiation. But Administrator Sean O'Keefe said Wednesday that understanding how the human body responds to long periods in space, and how to mitigate the effects, will become the agency's top research priority, especially at the International Space Station. "We're reordering ... the very specific emphasis on the research on station to emphasize life science, human physiology, (and) the human effects and consequence of long-duration space flight," O'Keefe said. "This will become the primary, almost singular focus of our research agenda in the time ahead." The space agency decided about a year ago to focus its radiation-protection efforts through a program based at Marshall. "We're looking for innovative materials sources to protect the astronauts from damaging radiation" said Ed Semmes, program manager of the Space Radiation Shielding Program, which was created in February 2003. Scientists at other NASA centers, the Department of Energy and universities around the country are involved in the research. Last fall, NASA commissioned the $34 million Space Radiation Laboratory at the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. The lab is designed to simulate the radiation astronauts encounter in space. The first material produced by the Space Radiation Shielding Program and tested at the lab was reinforced polyethylene, developed by Marshall scientist Raj Kaul. Water is a good shield against radiation, and scientists have been using it as a benchmark for the level of protection they are seeking in new materials, Semmes said. Tests show that reinforced polyethylene "behaves very closely to what water does," he said. Reinforced polyethylene eventually could replace the traditional aluminum skin of spacecraft, Semmes said. "It's about 10 times stronger than aluminum per unit weight," he said.
October 23, 2002 Space Station Radiation Shields Disappointing. Radiation levels on the International Space Station are as high as they were on the antiquated Russian space station Mir, in spite of NASA's attempts to clad the ISS with better shielding. If NASA can't protect astronauts, its vision of sending a crew into deep space may come to nothing. Data collected by NASA and a Russian-Austrian collaboration show that astronauts on the ISS are subjected to about 1 millisievert of radiation per day, about the same as someone would get from natural sources on Earth in a whole year. Spending three months in these conditions translates into about one-tenth the long-term cancer risk incurred by regular smokers. While this may be an acceptable risk, sending astronauts beyond the Earth's protective magnetic field will vastly increase their exposure. "If you sent two people to Mars, one of them would die," says Marco Durante of the Federico II University in Naples, who has studied the health effects of radiation in Mir astronauts for ESA. Radiation inside the ISS, and the now defunct Mir, is caused when the fast, heavy ions that make up cosmic rays collide with the aluminium hull, releasing a shower of secondary particles into the living quarters.
July 16, 2002 CSA Study Gauges Astronaut Radiation Exposure. Astronauts working outside the International Space Station (ISS) are exposed to about 27 times as much radiation annually than people on Earth, but the levels are still very low for space, Canadian researchers announced Tuesday. Preliminary results from a year-long study funded by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) show that astronauts were subjected to lower than expected levels of high-energy proton and electron radiation sent from the Sun over the last five months. The Extravehicular Activity Radiation Monitor study (EVARM) began in February, with astronauts wearing radiation detectors as they worked in space. "This is good news for the astronauts," said EVARM lead researcher Ian Thomson during a telephone interview. Thomson is also president of Thomson Nielsen Electronics, Ltd., an Ottawa company that manufactures radiation-measuring devices for medical uses. "It looks like we're at a lower end of the radiation sent by the 11-year [sunspot] cycle."
May 1, 2001 Space Weather on Mars. The Red Planet is substantially exposed to the harshest elements of space weather. Unlike Earth, which sits inside a protective magnetic bubble called the magnetosphere, Mars does not have a global magnetic field to shield it from solar flares and cosmic rays. Scientists aren't sure why, but Mars' internal magnetic dynamo turned off about 4 billion years ago. After that, the solar wind gradually eroded the martian atmosphere until, today, it is less than 1% as thick as Earth's. No global magnetic field and a very thin atmosphere -- those are the two factors that render Mars vulnerable to space radiation. Does such exposure mean Mars is lifeless? Not necessarily, say scientists. Indigenous life forms could be radiation resistant, like the terrestrial microbe Deinococcus radiodurans. Tiny Martians might also live in rocks or soil, substances that provide natural protection against radiation. Nor is Mars necessarily uninhabitable for humans. If we learn how to shelter ourselves from the planet's unique brand of weather, humans can explore and perhaps even live on Mars. That's why NASA is sending a radiation monitor to the Red Planet ... to find out how much protection we humans might require.
October 9, 2000 Airline radiation threat to be assessed. The risk that airline passengers and staff face from cosmic and solar radiation is to be measured by scientists.
Radiation from the sun and other sources, is mainly absorbed by different layers of the atmosphere when it hits the earth. However, at higher altitudes, the atmosphere is thinner and offers less protection. Now British scientists are linking up with Virgin Atlantic to fit aircraft with equipment to measure radiation within the cabin. The study is being backed by the Civil Aviation Authority, whose medical director Robert Hunter said: "We need a better understanding of the factors that may cause the radiation dose rates in aircraft to vary. "In particular we need to determine the influence of solar activity. The radiation dose from a transatlantic flight is similar to the dose from a chest x-ray."
December 8, 1998 Sandia Labs to develop custom, radiation-hardened Pentium processor for space and defense needs. Intel will provide a no-fee license for its Pentium processor design to DOE's Sandia National Laboratories for the development of custom made microprocessors for US space and defense purposes. The agreement saves US taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in microprocessor design costs and provides the federal government with a 10-fold increase in processing power over the highest performing existing technology. The five generations of chips that Sandia has hardened have been essential elements in earth satellites, the Galileo mission, missiles, nuclear weapons, and in other applications where radiation degrades both the performance and reliability of conventional electronics," said Sandia Executive Vice President John Crawford. "DOE and Sandia are proud to be partnering with Intel, NASA, the Air Force Research Lab, and the National Reconnaissance Office to produce a rad-hard version of the Pentium. If we had to pay to license the Pentium technology, government costs would go up considerably."
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