This mission to the sun became more urgent when, less than one year ago, a massive solar storm interfered with communication about Hurricane Irma as the massive system bared down on the Virgin Islands.
On Sept. 6, 2017, the sun produced a X9.3 solar flare, considered to be a very large event. This flare knocked out radio communication.
A space scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that in the next 10 days after the flare, space weather and earth weather aligned to heighten an already tense situation in the Caribbean.
Amateur radio operators assisting with emergency communications in the islands reported to Hurricane Watch Net, a group of licensed amateur radio operators providing support to the National Hurricane Center, that radio communications went down for most of the morning and early afternoon on Sept. 6 because of the sun’s activity.
French civil aviation reported a 90-minute loss of communication with a cargo plane. Then, NOAA reported that high frequency radio — used by aviation, maritime, HAM radio, and other emergency bands — was unavailable for up to eight hours on Sept. 6.
But the sun’s impact wasn’t over yet, and neither was the threat of Earth’s severe weather. On Sept. 10, another large class-X flare erupted from the sun, disrupting radio communication for three hours. The disruption came as the Caribbean community was coping with the aftermath of Category 4 Hurricane Jose’s brush with the Leeward Islands and the Bahamas, and Irma’s passage over Little Inagua in the Bahamas on Sept. 8 and passage over Cuba on Sept. 9.
The Parker Solar Probe launched over the weekend will investigate a dramatic consequence of living near our star, which occasionally sends out blasts of plasma into space. These tantrums cause a collection of phenomena scientists call space weather, and if they’re dramatic enough, the outbursts can be dangerous to astronauts and satellites in their path — and particularly strong ones could knock out power grids here on Earth.
Scientists have some techniques for predicting the space-weather equivalent of tornadoes and hurricanes, but they hope the mission will make those predictions more accurate. While the probe will not be able to prevent another major impact of severe space weather on dealing with terrestrial weather, it could help responders better handle such a situation.
About the Author