Unexpected solar weather is accelerating satellites' orbital decay (opens in new tab)

Check out the NOAA solar cycle data: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression

You are right that operators plan for variations in solar activity. But it remains to be seen how many can cope with a significantly more active cycle than predicted.

> This drag also helps clean up the near-Earth environment from space junk. Scientists know that the intensity of this drag depends on solar activity — the amount of solar wind spewed by the sun, which varies depending on the 11-year solar cycle. The last cycle, which officially ended in December 2019, was rather sleepy, with a below-average number of monthly sunspots and a prolonged minimum of barely any activity. But since last fall, the star has been waking up, spewing more and more solar wind and generating sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass ejections at a growing rate. And the Earth's upper atmosphere has felt the effects.

> In late 2021, operators of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Swarm constellation noticed something worrying: The satellites, which measure the magnetic field around Earth, started sinking toward the atmosphere at an unusually fast rate — up to 10 times faster than before.

> By coincidence (or beginner's luck), the onset of the new space revolution came during that sleepy solar cycle. These new operators are now facing their first solar maximum. But not only that. The sun's activity in the past year turned out to be much more intense than solar weather forecasters predicted, with more sunspots, more coronal mass ejections and more solar wind hitting our planet.

> "The solar activity is a lot higher than the official forecast suggested," Hugh Lewis, a professor of engineering and physical sciences at the University of Southampton in the U.K. who studies the behavior of satellites in low Earth orbit, told Space.com. "In fact, the current activity is already quite close to the peak level that was forecasted for this solar cycle, and we are still two to three years away from the solar maximum."

> Stromme confirmed those observations. "The solar cycle 25 that we are entering now is currently increasing very steeply," she said. "We do not know if this means that it will be a very tough solar cycle. It could slow down, and it could become a very weak solar cycle. But right now, it's increasing fast."

Theoretically, as $ per kg launch costs come down with things like reusable falcon 9, it makes it much less costly to equip medium sized LEO satellite with more fuel than it might have costed 10 or 15 years ago.

Or if you have something that needs to orbit really low and minimize drag/maximize lifespan, you could design it to be particularly aerodynamic and shaped like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Field_and_Steady-State...

Great, and I'm sure literal rocket scientists are not space.com's target audience.

I read the article, and I didn't receive it as fear mongering at all. You might not be aware that people outside of rocket science are probably pretty ignorant of space weather and its direct affect on the Earth and its inhabitants. Putting a bit of explanation out there in a fairly easy way to understand is not a bad thing. As easy as this was to grasp, there will still be people that are confused after reading.

Apparently not simply part of the solar cycle when new types of spacecraft (lacking typical propulsion systems) haven’t been in orbit during a high activity solar peak.

There are some points that are alarmist. “Plummet” isn’t something that seems to happen.

Really what is unexpected.

(Feb. 26, 2022) "“We have finalized our forecast of SC25’s amplitude,” says McIntosh. “It will be just above the historical average with a monthly smoothed sunspot number of 190 ± 20.”

"“Above average” may not sound exciting, but this is in fact a sharp departure from NOAA’s official forecast of a weak solar cycle"

[0] https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2022/02/25/the-termination-e...

Some competition: http://acswa.us/about/members.html

This turned out not to be the case...that was pretty much known by the early 2000s.

Other irradiance variations, due to orbital variations called Milankovich cycles, happening in the 10,000's of year range, do appear to influence climate. Of course, the extremes we're seeing now are not on the 10,000-year time scale.

You park things in low earth orbit so that they don't stay up forever and indeed come down in reasonably small human-scale timeframes. Usually on the time scale of decades, sometimes more, sometimes less.

If you designed a satellite to stay up for 10 years, it'll suddenly only be able to stay up a year, that's the scale of these things.

Again it's an exponential thing, a seemingly small scale change in the slow part makes the fast part come quite a lot sooner.

Plummet gets the clicks though, so to the website, it is appropriate.

It could also be argued it's a sense of perspective. Something that falls at the rate of 2km per year suddenly in a matter of months starts to fall at a rate of 20km per year could seem like plummeting when you're the one tasked with keeping it alive or the person that paid for it to be there for 10 years to see it suddenly shortened to 2 years. It's a stretch, but we all love hyperbole

Thread about that:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30267587 (488 comments)

It's clickbait. I appreciate people pointing out clickbait. I think a lot of others do as well; it's why they read the comments on an article before the look at the article.

Had the story been titled "Solar Weather Causes Unexpected Satellite Orbit Decay" or some other non-clickbait thing I'd have read it without looking at comments first. I'm actually interested in solar weather due to its impact on radio. Too bad publishers don't understand that clickbait titles are a serious turn off. Apparently everything must be TMZ.

In this case, the discussion of the word plummet is halfway topical: it's about understanding the severity and going more into detail of what's actually happening, putting it in context. The equivalent discussion would happen regardless of word choice.

Too many writers—including of headlines—are so sloppy with language that it's misleading, or even incorrect.

Perhaps when GPT-4 or whatever takes over those jobs, it will be better at it. Provided we don't train it on anything written after 2000 or so, when all headlines became tabloid headlines and margins got tight enough that no-one had time for careful editing anymore.

But also, people just kind of suck at it.

* "Destruction of the Warship Maine was the work of an Enemy. $50,000 Reward~" https://sophia.smith.edu/fys169-f19/wp-content/uploads/sites...

* There's also the fake propaganda Ben Franklin pushed so that the 1776 revolution would have the moral high ground. (Ben Franklin fabricated the "Scalping" of USA's early citizens to fake a war-crime, to make the British look more monstrous). https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-37-02-01...

I'm not sure if there ever was non-clickbait headlines. In fact, the further back in history you go, the more clickbait, and even fully fake, information seems to exist.

When the warning signs are ignored because they don't fit the political propaganda, then sure...it's "unexpected"