The storms took place bang in the middle of NASA’s Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 Moon missions, with just a few months on either side. Near miss: the summer of ‘72 Apollo 17 Harrison Scmitt and roverĮxactly 50 years ago in August 1972, a series of powerful solar storms including significant solar particle events caused widespread disruption to satellites and ground-based communications systems on Earth. ![]() When it comes to the Artemis missions, much of the radiation from a particle event would be blocked by the walls of the space capsule – Orion and its European Service Module were designed to ensure the reliability of essential systems during radiation events.īut the event could interfere with communications between the crew and teams on Earth, and the astronauts could have to seek refuge in a makeshift storm shelter, as happened on the Space Station in September 2017. Solar particle events are associated with particularly big solar flares and coronal mass ejections, as it is these eruptions that can cause shockwaves that shove solar particles to dangerous speeds. It is these high-energy particles shot through space that can affect a spacecraft and its crew. ![]() They occur when particles emitted by the Sun – mostly protons but also some ionised atoms like Helium – are sped up, accelerated to near relativistic velocities. ![]() ‘Solar energetic particle events’ are the ones to watch out for.
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