LONDON: The U.S. government is getting more serious about dealing with the dangers posed by powerful sun storms.
On Thursday (Oct. 29), the White House released two documents that together lay out the nation’s official plan for mitigating the negative impacts of solar flares and other types of “space weather,” which have the potential to wreak havoc on power grids and other key infrastructure here on Earth.
The new “National Space Weather Strategy” outlines the basic framework the federal government will pursue to better understand, predict and recover from space-weather events, while the “National Space Weather Action Plan” details specific activities intended to help achieve this broad goal. [The Sun’s Wrath: Worst Solar Storms in History]
“The efforts undertaken to achieve the objectives of this strategy will establish a national approach to the security and resilience in the face of our improved understanding of the seriousness of the space-weather risk, and the steps we must take to prepare for it,” Suzanne Spaulding, undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Protection and Programs Directorate, said Thursday during an event hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) that discussed the new documents.
That risk is indeed serious, many experts say. High-energy solar flares aimed at Earth can affect the operation of orbiting satellites, and the most powerful emissions can even pose a risk to astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Of even larger concern are coronal mass ejections (CMEs), huge eruptions that send clouds of solar plasma streaking through space at millions of miles per hour. CMEs that hit Earth can spawn intense geomagnetic storms, with the potential to disrupt power grids, satellite navigation and radio communications temporarily.
In March 1989, for example, a strong CME caused a blackout that left 6 million people in the Canadian province of Quebec without power for 9 hours, OSTP Director John Holdren said during Thursday’s event, which was webcast live.
