Sunstorm CubeSat completes 3 year space weather mission

[gary]

Originally Posted by SHANNON CUTHRELL, IEEE Spectrum

After three years in orbit, Europe’s Sunstorm CubeSat re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on 4 September 2024, completing its mission to monitor X-ray pulses from solar flares, the breeding ground of disruptive space weather phenomena. These flares are sometimes accompanied by coronal mass ejections that spew billions of tonnes of material from the sun’s atmosphere.

On Earth, space storms can damage critical infrastructure, including radio communications and the power grid. In space, they disrupt satellites: In May, the biggest solar storm in over 20 years pushed low-orbit satellites and space debris toward Earth at a rate of 180 meters per day for four days. These events threaten the growing number of research and commercial projects in space, making solar weather forecasts a high-demand opportunity. Sunstorm’s verification of high-resolution X-ray tracking technology could offer the ability to predict space weather better than before and make it easier to protect satellites in orbit and infrastructure on Earth.

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https://spectrum.ieee.org/space-weather-forecast