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Posted May 31st, 2007 by adminNASA Tech Briefs INSIDER 05/31/2007
NASA Spacecraft Aids in Forecast of Solar Radiation Storms
Solar radiation storms are swarms of electrons, protons, and heavy ions accelerated to high speed by explosions on the sun. On Earth, humans are protected from these particles by Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field. “Solar radiation storms are notoriously difficult to predict. They often take us by surprise, but now we’ve found a way to anticipate these events,” said Arik Posner, a physicist in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
The key to the breakthrough was the Comprehensive Suprathermal and Energetic Particle Analyzer (COSTEP) instrument on board the observatory. COSTEP counts particles coming from the sun and measures their energies. Posner looked at hundreds of radiation storms recorded by COSTEP between 1996 and 2002, and was able to construct an empirical, predictive matrix that involved plugging an electron data into the matrix, and an ion forecast emerging.
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