European Space Agency: Solar storms could destroy satellites
0European Space Agency: Solar storms could destroy satellites
European Space Agency (ESA) officials said that the Swarm satellite, which studies the Earth's magnetic field, sank into the atmosphere due to solar storms.
Scientists believe that solar air can cause satellites to fall out of their orbits.
According to information in GOLAHURA, over the past year, the European Space Agency's Swarm constellation, which measures magnetic fields around Earth, began to shift in the atmosphere ten times faster than before.
"For the last five, six years, satellites have been sinking about two and a half kilometers per year. But they've been diving almost since last December. The rate of decline between December and April is 20 per year," Anja Stromme, ESA's mission manager for Swarm, told Space.com. kilometers,” he said.
It is thought that the new solar cycle, which started simultaneously with these phenomena, may be responsible.
More solar wind activity, sunspots, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections are being produced at an increasing rate.
Dr. "There's a lot of complex physics that we still don't fully understand going on in the upper layers of the atmosphere where it interacts with the solar wind. We know that this interaction causes the atmosphere to rise. This means that denser air shifts to higher altitudes," said Stromme.
Dr Stromme said the denser air creates more friction for the satellites, thus causing the satellites to slow down and sink.
The satellites sank so dramatically that in May operators had to raise altitudes using their propulsion on the satellites.
If the satellites get too low, there is a danger that agencies will lose them entirely.