Space Weather Storms May Spark Satellite and Communications Failures on Earth

The effects of space weather are still largely unknown, but it turns out that they could impact satellites and communications across the globe. Scientists have revealed that space weather may be to blame for some satellite failures.

Space weather includes a broad range of phenomena, including solar flares, geomagnetic storms and other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The basic concept is that radiation in the form of particles bombard Earth's atmosphere. Fortunately, it can't pass through our atmosphere to impact humans on the ground. Yet sometimes it can disrupt it enough to disturb radio signals.

Yet it turns out radio signals might not only be impacted. Geostationary satellites might also be affected. These satellites provide much of the world's access to cable television, Internet services and global communications. Needless to say, if these satellites were brought down by space weather then it would be bad for all of us.

Geostationary satellites orbit at the same rate as the Earth's rotation. This allows them to essentially remain above the same location throughout their lifetimes, which are about 15 years. While they're warded against radiation with protective shielding, over time radiation can penetrate and degrade a satellite's components.

In order to learn a little more about how space weather might affect these satellites, the researchers examined space weather conditions at the time of 26 failures in eight geostationary satellites over 16 years of operation.  It turned out that most of these failures occurred during times of high-energy electron activity during declining phases of the solar cycle. It's possible that this particle flux may have accumulated in the satellites over time, creating internal charging that damaged their amplifiers.

"Users are starting to demand more capabilities," said Whitney Lohmeyer, one of the researchers, in a news release. "They want to start video-streaming data, they want to communicate faster with higher data rates. So design is changing-along with susceptibilities to space weather and radiation that didn't use to exist, but are now becoming a problem."

In order to combat this space weather, though, scientists need to design satellites with this particular phenomenon in mind. But it's not easy; a satellite's radiation exposure may vary depending on its orbit. For example, some orbits may be more dangerous than others, so some satellites may need more protection. This is especially important since losing a satellite is costly and hard to replace.

"Once you get into a 15-year mission, you may run out of redundant amplifiers," said Lohmeyer. "If a company has invested over $200 million in a satellite, they need to be able to assure it works for that period of time. We really need to improve our method of quantifying and understanding the space environment, so we can better improve design."

The findings are published in the journal Space Weather.