Satellites falling back to Earth from dangerous solar flares shock scientists

Solar flares ema­nat­ing from the Sun hit satel­lites and cause them to fall back to Earth.

There have been fre­quent reports of the Sun emit­ting numer­ous solar flares as it goes through its 11-year active cycle. These solar flares are prov­ing dan­ger­ous to the tech­no­log­i­cal infra­struc­ture in the sky. The sit­u­a­tion has got­ten so bad that sci­en­tists are now con­cerned that recent solar activ­i­ty is even caus­ing satel­lites to fall back from the sky to Earth. For the unini­ti­at­ed, accord­ing to NASA, a solar flare is an intense burst of radi­a­tion cre­at­ed by the release of mag­net­ic ener­gy asso­ci­at­ed with sunspots. Flares are the largest explo­sive events in our solar sys­tem and can last from min­utes to hours.

Accord­ing to The Sun’s report, we are cur­rent­ly see­ing more fre­quent solar flares, main­ly because the Sun is at the begin­ning of its 11-year solar cycle and in a very active phase. The sun’s mag­net­ic field goes through a cycle called the solar cycle, and about every 11 years the sun’s mag­net­ic field com­plete­ly flips. This means that the sun’s north and south poles swap places. It will then take anoth­er 11 years for the north and south poles of the sun to turn around again, accord­ing to NASA.

Earth­’s mag­net­ic field pro­tects us from the dam­ag­ing effects of most solar flares, but the real­ly strong ones can be trag­ic. Accord­ing to NASA, solar flares and out­bursts can cause radio black­outs, affect pow­er grids, inter­net, cell­phone and nav­i­ga­tion sig­nals, and pose risks to space­craft, astro­nauts and satellites.

The impact of solar flares on satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions is a cur­rent con­cern. The Sun says the Euro­pean Space Agency (ESA) is con­cerned about its swarm con­stel­la­tion, which mea­sures Earth­’s mag­net­ic field. ESA’s Swarm Head of Mis­sion, Anja Stromme, told Space.com: “In the last five, six years, the satel­lites have descend­ed about a mile and a half [1.5 miles] a year. But since Decem­ber of last year, they’ve been div­ing vir­tu­al­ly. The rate of descent was 20 kilo­me­ters between Decem­ber and April [12 miles] per year.”

The set­ting coin­cid­ed with the Sun’s extreme activ­i­ty, and it’s wide­ly accept­ed that satel­lites bat­tling the harsh con­di­tions in space will even­tu­al­ly fall back to Earth and burn up. And the cur­rent rate at which satel­lites are falling is a cause for con­cern, but there’s lit­tle that can be done about it.