Earlier this year, the Earth was hit by the most intense geomagnetic storms in twenty years. The most obvious consequences of the storm were the beautiful displays of aurora in the northern and southern hemispheres at unusual latitudes. In the following days, the internet was ablaze with these images.
But the storm also had more insidious consequences for the world’s rapidly growing population of satellites. Physicists have long known that these storms can fry circuits, interrupt communication and change the trajectories of objects in low earth orbit. So an important question is how these satellites fared during and after the storm.
Storm Damage Now we get an answer thanks to the work of William Parker and Richard Linares at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who have studied the impact of the storm on the entire catalogue of satellites in low earth orbit and beyond. They say the storm seriously disrupted the ability to predict collisions in orbit for several days, which significantly increased the risk for all those operating in low Earth orbit. Astronomers have long observed the 11-year solar cycle during which the number of sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass ejections rise and fall.
In 2024 and 2025, the Sun will be near the peak of this cycle, so physicists are expecting a sharp increase in the number and intensity of solar storms reaching our shores. Between 7-11 May this year, exactly that happened. Various solar observatories spotted five di.