Satellite failures are inevitable – weather and extreme space events prove

Assuming a satellite survives the launch and calls home without any troubles, it faces a constant battle for survival out in the harshness of space. Even Earth satellites in low orbits can see temperature swings of minus 50°C (-58°F) to plus 50°C (122°F) every 90 minutes, which can have a big effect on the equipment onboard, as can the lack of air. “Materials that you thought were quite solid can actually have some liquid or gaseous components which can leave into the vacuum of space, changing the properties of the material and causing it to shrink or become brittle,” says Andy Vick, head of disruptive technology at RAL Space. Space weather is another major contributor to satellite failures. Many of these bus-sized, multi-ton satellites are out in GEO, thousands of miles from Earth where there is little atmospheric protection from extreme conditions and large amounts of radiation. And the void can be surprisingly active and unpredictable when it comes to weather. X-rays, ultraviolet rays, radiation, and geomagnetic storms can all wreak havoc on-board; components can be damaged by the high current that discharges into the satellite or damaged by high-energy particles that penetrate the satellite. Space dust – literally tiny particles of rock dust – can hit the sats and become plasma and damage equipment. Sun Outages, where the satellite passes in front of the Sun, don't harm the satellite. However, the sun's interference swamps the signal from the satellite, causing a loss of data. These outages affect the signals from geostationary satellites, and can last for around ten minutes a day during the Equinox - but they are predictable. The University of Reading recently recorded the first ‘space hurricane’ which it described as a ‘1,000km-wide swirling mass of plasma raining electrons several hundred kilometers above the North Pole.’ The most notorious space weather event was the Carrington Event, a solar flare in 1859 that caused auroras as far south as the Caribbean, woke people in the night thinking it was morning, and caused telegraph lines to fail. Smaller events in 1989 caused blackouts and communication failures. A Carrington-level event today would cause worldwide electronics failures, and could wipe out all the satellite networks of the world if action wasn’t taken ahead of time. In a disaster report, space insurance consortium Atrium warned a single anomalously large proton flare or a number of flares in quick succession from our sun could result in a loss of power to all satellites in geosynchronous orbit and cost billions of dollars to fix. Dr. Holger Krag, head of the Space Safety Programme Office for the European Space Agency, tells DCD there is little that can be done to protect satellites from the impact of a solar flare beyond turning off key electrical systems ahead of time. But the unpredictable nature of the sun can make this a difficult task. To better predict coronal ejections from the sun and provide more notice about potential space weather events, the ESA has planned a mission called Lagrange, where spacecraft will be positioned at "Lagrange points", where the gravity of the Earth and Sun balance providing stable locations to observe the sun’s activity a few days ahead of the Earth’s position. “From [the L5] position, it can see the surface of the sun that would turn towards Earth three days later. We can see an advanced view of the activity area on the sun as it’s rotating around its axis towards the Earth,” says Dr. Krag. “At the same time, you can have a side view on the line between Earth and Sun so it can see coronal mass ejection traveling from the Sun to the Earth and it can measure the velocity of the ejections."