Artist's concept of the Carrington-L5 mission concept.
Credit: Airbus Defence and Space (UK)
Coronal mass ejections (CME),
billion-tonne solar plasma eruptions moving towards the Earth at up to
2500 kilometres per second, can cause extensive and expensive disruption
by damaging power, satellite and communication networks. A UK
consortium is proposing an operational mission, called Carrington-L5, to
give a five-day warning of hazardous solar activity that could inflict
severe damage to our infrastructure. The mission concept will be
presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno by Dr Markos
Trichas of Airbus Defence and Space (UK).
In response to the UK government adding solar storms to the National
Risk Register of Civil Emergencies in 2011, the Met Office Space Weather
Operations Centre (MOSWOC) was created to protect the country from the
serious threats posed by space weather events. Current warnings of CME
arrival at Earth use facilities like SOHO, STEREO and SDO. However, none
of these are designed to provide 24/7 data, necessary for accurate and
timely forecasts and all the spacecraft are ageing rapidly, with some of
them having spent more than two decades in space. More importantly,
STEREO, which provided essential data for early warnings, is now behind
the Sun and is unable to communicate any data back to Earth. With the
current spacecraft configuration, the accuracy of CME arrival time
forecasts has been significantly degraded.
The goal of the consortium is to replace data provided by the STEREO
satellites, through a new mission capable of providing continuous data
from a stable orbit, necessary for the Met Office to provide 5-day
forecasts and increase the accuracy of CME arrival forecasts. The
proposed Carrington-L5 mission is named after the British scientist who
monitored the strongest geomagnetic storm on record, the event of 1859.
To provide the necessary warning time, Carrington-L5 will utilize a
gravitational balance point, known as L5, which would allow it to trail
the Earth in its orbit around the Sun by about 150 million kilometres.
From this perspective, the spacecraft would have a view of what's
happening on the surface of the Sun several days in advance of when an
active area spins round towards Earth.
The Carrington-L5 mission concept study is led by Airbus Defence and
Space (UK), in collaboration with the Met Office, Mullard Space Science
Laboratory, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Imperial College London.
The proposed mission will reuse systems developed by Airbus for previous
space missions, in order to minimise the cost. It will carry all
instruments identified by MOSWOC as critical, and will be able to
operate for at least a decade even under extreme space weather
conditions.
"Within the UK, we have the heritage and experience to create this
mission on a relatively short timescale and at a low overall cost," said
Trichas. "All components we are planning to use for the Carrington-L5
spacecraft and payload have flown before or are in an advanced stage of
development. This will minimise the cost of procurement and massively
increase the benefits to our economy while allowing the growth of the UK
space industry."
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from
materials provided by
Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Ditulis Oleh : Unknown
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