Friday, February 1, 2013

Strong electrical currents driven in the Earth’s surface during auroral events can disrupt and damage modern electric power grids and may contribute to the corrosion of oil and gas pipelines. Changes in the ionosphere during geomagnetic storms driven by magnetic activity of the Sun interfere with high-frequency radio communications and GPS navigation. During polar cap absorption events caused by solar protons, radio communications can be severely compromised for commercial airliners on transpolar crossing routes. Exposure of spacecraft to energetic particles during solar energetic particle events and radiation belt enhancements can cause temporary operational anomalies, damage critical electronics, degrade solar arrays, and blind optical systems such as imagers and star trackers used on commercial and government satellites.

No comments:

Post a Comment