Storms from the Sun The Emerging Science of Space Weather (2002) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1. The Day the Pagers Died
1. The Day the Pagers Died
Pages 11-30
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From page 11... ...
States while evening commuters were tuning their radios to National Public Raclio's (NPR) "All Things Consiclerecl," while police, rescue, and fire crews were easing into the seconc!
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From page 12... ...
According to Barbara Thompson, a space weather researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the Sun spat
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Earth was buffetec! by a series of intense space weather storms.
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Geostationary Operational Environment Satellites (known as GOES, these spacecraft capture the satellite weather images shown on TV) cletectec!
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forms complex regions cluring solar maximum." One of the first victims of active region 8210 was the Largeangle Spectrometric Coronagraph instrument on SOHO. The camera was flooclec!
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On May 4 space weather brought auroras to Boston, London, ant! Chicago ant!
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From page 17... ...
aurora in a typical winter, plus frequent steacly arcs over the southern horizon," Paley notes, arcs that are miles away, that result from moderate storms. "The first time people see one of these steacly arcs it is an automatic waste of a roll of film." Such distant arcs are almost boring to the Antarctic veterans, who know that the ciancing curtains will eventually appear straight overheat!
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From page 18... ...
with one of the larger natural changes of the Earth's magnetic field! ever recorded from Antarctica.
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trapped in the external magnetic fielcl of Earth. Magnetic fields exert forces on electrically charger!
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From page 20... ...
International Space Station Alpha and the space shuttle are both flown well beneath the inner belt, though they occasionally cross the regions where the belts snuggle close to Earth, such as the South Atlantic magnetic anomaly. In more comprehensive stuclies since the last peak of the solar cycle in 1989, Dan Baker ant!
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From page 21... ...
In the wake of Barbara Thompson's solar blasts ant! Matt Paley's ciancing auroras, the relatively harmless atomic particles that are naturally suspenclec!
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From page 22... ...
"And much of that work happens on the fringes of the radiation belts." Knowing something about how the radiation belts behave, and knowing how wild they were in May 1998, Baker and Reeves and other colleagues believe they can make a compelling case that Mother Nature not some mechanical or engineering error probably crippled the worlds pager network. They point to a lengthy list of timely coincidences Baker sees it as circumstantial evidence to suggest that the cause of Galaxy IV was something less than mysterious and "random." While the Sun was raging in April and the radiation belts were tightening in May, one major science satellite failed (Germany's Equator-S)
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From page 23... ...
"Dielectric charging can cause, or at least exacerbate, problems with spacecraft electronics," asserts Baker, who is accuser! by some industry colleagues of howling at the space weather Moon.
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From page 24... ...
in the steacly downpour of killer electrons. Without access to proprietary data from PanAmSat or Hughes Space ant!
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From page 25... ...
through Galaxy IV. Reuters news service lost some of the reports it was gentling through the communications satellite.
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From page 26... ...
Meanwhile, engineers from PanAmSat and Hughes Space and Communications conducted an "extensive analysis of the cause of the spacecraft control processor failures." In the 12 years since Hughes had begun building and flying the HS 601 the model of satellite that included Galaxy IV there had never been an "operational failure." In fact, since 1963 no other Hughes-built satellite of any kind had failed. Three months after the May space weather barrage, officials from the two companies announced that the demise of the communications satellite was caused by two separate problems.
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From page 27... ...
they create a narrow gap between an active circuit ant! another conductor, across which a spark can jump with greater facility than wouic!
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From page 28... ...
satellite TV companies, the upstart phone services, the teleconferencing networks, the financial markets could be caught without an alternative when their satellite fails. "It seems inaclvisable to have such complex, societally significant systems susceptible to single spacecraft failures," notes Dan Baker.
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From page 29... ...
The Day the Pagers Died pates! things like this ant!
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