EOM April 2005 > SHARING IN GEOTECHNOLOGIES

NPOESS: Monitoring the Near-Earth Space Environment

Lt. Col. Mika Bonadonna, William Denig, Dave Jones

This is the ninth in a series of articles on the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). In previous articles, we described NPOESS and its capabilities to monitor and observe land, sea, and air to improve forecasts of "terrestrial weather" and Earth's environment. NPOESS will also carry a suite of sensors designed to monitor the near-Earth space environment. Measurements from these sensors will improve our capability to observe and forecast "space weather" and mitigate its effects on space- and ground-based technological systems and manned spaceflight missions.

Introduction: Forecasting the Future
Imagine the year 2018. It is a busy day on the International Space Station as the mission astronauts prepare to launch a trans-lunar shuttle to a construction site, Mare Tranquillitatis. Suddenly, the space environmental warning system blares a message, "WARNING! A solar X-Ray event has been detected. All personnel report immediately to radiation shelters."

The space-based X-Ray telescopes on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) and ground-based optical and radio telescopes operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) have just detected an extremely powerful solar flare on the face of the sun.

Moments later as the space station crew members settle into their protective shelters, high-energy protons are detected by the space environmental sensors on the National Polar- orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). Using these data, space weather forecasters at NOAA's Space Environment Center relay a message through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that the radiation storm will decay to safe levels within an hour. Meanwhile, Air Force Weather personnel are advising military satellite operators that navigational errors and communication disruptions can be expected and that predetermined backup procedures should be implemented to avoid adverse impacts to deployed forces and military operations. Satellite operators are now able to identify spacecraft malfunctions as being associated with adverse space weather conditions rather than hostile actions against their systems, analogous to a space-aged "Pearl Harbor" attack.

Science Fiction or a Real Future Possibility?
In fact, space weather does impact today's highly-complex technological systems and we've begun to operationally monitor daily variations in space weather through a wide range of ground-based and space-based sensors. Recent examples show just how vulnerable we are to space weather.

Illustration of sun-earth connections. The sun drives our weather here Earth and also emits huge amounts of energy that could affect satellites biting as well as sensitive ground systems such as power grids and mobile phone networks. (Image not to scale)

In October 2003, a series of large geomagnetic storms caused numerous problems in the near-Earth space environment and around the world. These solar storms forced trans-polar commercial airliners to divert to more southerly routes to reduce hazards to passengers and crew and to avoid High Frequency (HF) communication losses. The electrical power grid in southern Sweden tripped, plunging the city of Malmo and its population of over 250,000 into darkness. At the same time, numerous near-Earth spacecraft suffered service disruptions, component damage, or complete mission failure, as was the case for the ADvanced Earth Observing Satellite 2 (ADEOS-2) also known as Midori-2. In January 1997, a similar geomagnetic storm severely damaged the U.S. Telstar 401 communication satellite, which was valued at $200 million, and left it inoperable.

In years past, space weather was identified as the culprit in many system failures and disruptions. In 1989, Hydro-Quebec suffered an extensive power outage caused by a severe geomagnetic storm that destroyed portions of the Canadian electric power distribution system and left six million people without electricity for nine hours at an estimated cost of $300 million. The direct financial impact to Hydro-Quebec from this storm alone was estimated to be in excess of $10 million dollars.

Space weather is a real, certainly costly, and potentially life threatening phenomenon. The National Space Weather Program (NSWP) describes space weather as the conditions on the sun and in the solar wind, magnetosphere, ionosphere, and thermosphere that can influence the performance and reliability of space-borne and ground-based technological systems and can endanger human life or health. Adverse conditions in the space environment can increase human risk to radiation exposure in high altitude aircraft and on manned spaceflight missions, disrupt satellite operations, impact the communication and navigational infrastructure, and damage electric power distribution grids, leading to a variety of socioeconomic losses. The NSWP, overseen by the Federal Coordinator for Meteorology, is responsible for implementing a national strategy to advance the observation of and response to adverse space weather and to prevent or mitigate the deleterious effects of space weather events. The goal of the program is to achieve an interagency system to provide timely, accurate, and reliable space environment observations, specifications, and forecasts within the next ten years.

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