20 New Satellites to Forecast Space Weather

Satellites are becoming increasingly important in communications and navigation. This makes us more vulnerable to the phenomena that cause northern lights, especially those vehicles that are offshore and in the air. In a worst case scenario an aircraft can lose contact with its surroundings and oil tankers can struggle with precise navigation.

In order to more precisely predict when radio communications and navigation will fail, researchers require more information about what happens when violent solar winds hit the Earth and produce the northern lights.

The solar winds consist of charged particles and produce powerful turbulence in the ionosphere, which consists of plasma clouds with electrical particles at an altitude of 80 to 500 km. The turbulence interferes with radio signals. Sometimes they are reflected wrongly and on other occasions the signals are blocked altogether.

Universities around the world are now working together to understand what is happening at a micro-level in the plasma clouds. When they have found the answers, the space experts will be able to forecast space weather, just like meteorologists forecast the Earth’s weather every day.

Unfortunately, a single satellite is not enough. It takes just over an hour and a half to orbit the Earth. This is far too long. The phenomena researchers are looking for often disappear after just an hour. Therefore, it is impossible to use a single satellite to study the changes over such a short time. The researchers need a lot of satellites, which will be spread around the Earth like pearls on a string.

In 2013, the University of Oslo will launch 50 small satellites into a polar orbit at an altitude of 320 km above the Earth. This will allow the satellites to pass each geographical point at intervals of just a few minutes, both above the polar regions and the equator.

The satellites will lose speed due to air resistance and their Earth orbits will continuously degrade. This will provide the researchers with an opportunity to study all layers of the ionosphere. The calculated service life is three to eight weeks, depending on solar activity, before the satellites fall into the atmosphere and burn up.

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