Astronomers expect the strong solar storms to continue

However, our central star has now continued to rotate and AR 3664 has shifted slightly to the side, so from astronomers’ perspective, only some of the ejected solar material (known as CME) during outbursts should hit Earth.

Space station ISS could be hit
Astronauts on the ISS space station can also be affected by solar storms. “The decision whether the ISS crew should go to shelter during a solar storm depends on the strength of the solar storm and the potential radiation exposure for the crew,” ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst told German news agency dpa. According to NASA, there was no immediate danger to the ISS crew during last weekend’s solar storm.

The sun’s activity fluctuates in a cycle of about eleven years. Currently, the current cycle is currently at its maximum. This takes several years, during which time there are always relatively many solar flares. “On Tuesday we saw the strongest outburst of the entire cycle so far,” said Sami Solanki of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen. It cannot be said whether the peak of the current maximum has already been reached.

It will take a maximum of two years
The current solar cycle is already slightly stronger than the previous one, explains astronomer Volker Bothmer from the University of Göttingen. He estimates the maximum will last about two years and then decline. He couldn’t predict whether the activity would increase or not. According to NOAA data, sunspot numbers today are not nearly as high as they were at the height of the maximums in the late 1950s and early 2000s.

According to the U.S. Atmospheric Administration NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), Tuesday’s major outburst also produced the strongest outburst — a kind of massive flash of light (captured at different frequency ranges in the image below) — of the current solar cycle.

Flare caused loss of radio signals
Radiation from the eruption caused high-frequency radio signal disruptions across America. Amateur radio operators, pilots and sailors may have noticed a sudden loss of signal at high frequencies. Geomagnetic effects such as the Northern Lights were considered unlikely.

Multiple satellite outages
Last weekend’s major solar storm not only produced colorful northern lights in many regions around the world, but also caused malfunctions in several satellites, for example at the European Space Agency (ESA).

“ESA satellites are also affected, but we are still collecting data,” an ESA spokeswoman confirmed. Some satellites in orbit are slightly off course because of the change in atmospheric drag always acting on them, she said. Course corrections should now get them back on track.

Partial GPS outages in the US
Several farmers in North America complained about the failure of the satellite-based US navigation system GPS, as reported by the New York Times, among others. They therefore had to interrupt sowing because they were using the system to work in the fields.

Internet connections at Starlink, which is owned by space company SpaceX and has thousands of satellites, were also temporarily affected, according to a report in the journal Nature. The instruments at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have been temporarily put away for protection, it is said.

Although the sunspot group AR 3664 disappears behind the Sun as seen from Earth, astronomers can continue to analyze this group thanks to ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft. They expect that a coronal mass ejection (CME) could hit Mars soon.