Space Weather

Space weather is an interesting topic that has not been discussed much. We know that the temperature in space is ~3 degrees Kelvin, however, we don’t consider space weather to be important because it is hard for us to visualize weather in space. Space weather is primarily affected by the interplanetary magnetic fields carried by solar wind plasma and solar winds. These can cause geomagnetic storms, geomagnetically induced currents on Earth’s surface, and Auroraes.

Although these doesn’t affect most people here on Earth, it can still have a negative effect on some of us. For instance, these space weather events can damage electronics on board spacecrafts, as that is what happened to the Galaxy 15 spacecraft (a telecommunications spacecraft) which caused us to lose communication. In some cases, this can threaten the lives of astronauts if something goes awry.

So even though space weather seems trivial, as we begin to further explore space, it will become more of a problem, and luckily we have devices now that can predict future solar events so we can better prepare for them.

Solar Winds visualized