Satellite News

The next 11-year cycle of solar storms will most likely start next March and peak in late 2011 or mid-2012 — up to a year later than expected — according to a forecast issued by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Environment Center in coordination with an international panel of solar experts.

NASA’s twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft have made the first three-dimensional images of the sun. The new view will greatly aid scientists’ ability to understand solar physics and thereby improve space weather forecasting, the agency said.

During an unprecedented solar eruption last December, researchers at Cornell University confirmed solar radio bursts can have a serious impact on the Global Positioning System (GPS) and other communication technologies using radio waves.

Scientists from the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center (ATC) are using data from the Toroidal Imaging Mass Angle Spectrograph (TIMAS)–an ATC instrument launched on the NASA Polar spacecraft in 1996–to determine how and where the energy from the solar wind is transferred into the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Since early 2005, SEISOP (Space Environment Information System for Operations), a space-weather monitoring and forecasting tool under development at ESA’s Space Operations Centre, has been successfully providing near-real-time space weather reports for Integral, ESA’s gamma-ray space observatory. In 2007, SEISOP will enter operational development aimed at providing all ESA missions with the same vital space weather updates, the agency said.

A solar outburst on 6 December produced a record amount of radio noise, said solar physicist Dale Gary, chair of the department of physics at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). Owing to a computer software failure, initial research reports in the U.S. downplayed the outbursts.

Recent solar activity has forced ESA mission controllers to react to anomalies or take action to avoid damage to spacecraft. Several missions, including Integral, Cluster and Envisat, felt the storm’s effects. Apparently, the International Space Station’s attitude control system was also affected.

An active sunspot group has produced a significant solar flare, according to the NOAA Space Environment Center (SEC).