Will the next sunspot cycle be a satellite killer?

[Analoguesat]

Scientist have had more hints that the next sunspot cycle will be much more active.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft may have glimpsed the first sunspot of the next 11-year solar cycle. It has come a tad early, and it may mean that the next sunspot cycle will be a particularly active one.

"It's kind of like the first swallow of spring," says David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, US. "It's the first indication that the next cycle is starting."

Sunspots are formed when magnetic fields that have been made deep inside the Sun become buoyant, rise up through the Sun and erupt through the surface, causing a dark, relatively cool, spot.

The number of sunspots varies on a period of about 11 years, the same timescale that the Sun's magnetic poles reverse direction. The next 11-year cycle was predicted to begin by March 2007.

But an unusual sunspot on 30 July may signal an early start of that cycle. For the past several years, sunspots in the Sun's southern hemisphere have been oriented north-south. This one, however, was magnetically backwards and had a south-north bent.



New Scientist - full report:
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn9778&feedId=space_rss20


Now we know that during high periods of solar activity our satellites (comms and survey plus miltary no doubt) can suffer damage from static discharges,
http://www.sat-index.com/failures/autumn2003.html
shows a long list of damge caused to satellites 3 years ago.......

 

[Lancelot]

Could be the end of even uncle Rupe, as a particularly energetic burst is more than capable of stripping the ozone layer in one go.

Still we'll all have that healthy bronzed look for a few days until the radiation poisoning takes hold, so not all bad then .


L.

 

[Channel Hopper]

Buggers up the earlier predictions then .

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10may_longrange.htm

One unhealthy looking zit

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/synoptic/sunspots_earth/mdi_sunspots_1024.jpg

 

[2cvbloke]

So if this sunspot kills off the satellites, then the equipment we paid good money for will become defunct for a few years then???

 

[Lancelot]

Got ya dish cheap enough didn't ya ???



L.

 

[2cvbloke]

Got ya dish cheap enough didn't ya ???



L.

Which one? I've got 6....

But what about the cost of receivers, cables, batteries (for the remotes) and beer?

 

[Channel Hopper]

With enough beer a raster can look interesting (but digital has killed off that concept as well)

 

[spiney]

Nah ...! Sats are hardened for outer space, where they'll spend many years (wot, you think they spend billions on the things, then forget to add enough shielding?).

True, sunspots DID used to cause chaos, in the days when we relied much more on hf radio!

 

[Analoguesat]

Hardened or not, plasma clouds from the sun can cause short circuits which can kill sats.

AT&T's Telstar 401 satellite experienced "an abrupt failure of its telemetry and communications" on 11 January 1997, 1115 UTC.

The likely cause of the failure was found by scientists. Working together in the International Solar Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) Program, they managed to track a so-called "magnetic cloud event" that originated from the Sun's surface on January 6. Its effects were carefully monitored by various satellite and ground based detectors until it arrived on the earth on 10 January.

"Preliminary evidence [...] suggests increased levels in the radiation environment, and possibly a connection to the malfunction of an AT&T satellite," the ISTP says on a Web page dedicated to the 'event.' Most charts available there show significant levels of activity in the earth's magnetosphere around the same time Telstar 401 went silent.

One explanation for the death of Telstar 401 seems to be that a magnetic cloud caused a massive short in the satellite's circuitry. This is in compliance with NASA observations made shortly after the failure, which indicated the bird was still in place but slowly spinning.

Other theories claim that the satellite was zapped by so-called killer electrons.

 

[spiney]

Yeah, but .....

1) We don't know for a fact what happened.

2) What about all the other sats, that DON'T fail?

(anything fails eventually, of course, there's a designed working lifetime.....).