An incoming solar storm cycle is going to make things much worse for the increasing number of satellites that are going up.
As Fang told the audience during the panel discussion, the February solar storm thatof then-newly-launched SpaceX Starlink satellites was just the tip of the iceberg.
"That storm was actually a minor storm in our catalog," she told the conference. "It’s not a huge storm."These kinds of storms and their effects on satellites do have one upside, however — coordinating with NOAA and other organizations to study the effects of increased geomagnetic activity and better be able to predict what can go haywire, Fang said.
This kind of data coordination will be useful because, as the space scientist noted, this new solar storm cycle comes after an 11-year era that was comparatively quite mild, and in which tons more satellites were launched than ever before. As such, current satellite technicians may not be prepared for the coming storms."If you look at the beginning of this year, things are very crazy. We’ve had a solar flare almost every week," Fang said at the panel.
It's a scary predicament, in other words, but we're not quite in "The Day After Tomorrow" territory quite yet. All the same, however, those who operate satellites are soon going to get a crash course in how to handle solar storms.
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