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Considered by some to be the stuff of science fiction, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack poses a direct threat to the U.S. electric grid a threat that is poorly understood and lacks the leadership to address it. An EMP a high-intensity burst of energy caused by a rapid acceleration of charged particles from either solar weather or a nuclear bomb detonated high in the atmosphere has the potential to cause devastating damage to the U.S. electric grid and severely impede recovery efforts.
Solar wind is composed of charged particles and the sun s magnetic field and is continually released from our star. Explore the phenomenon in more detail here.
Could lava tubes, caves, or subsurface habitats offer safe refuge for future astronauts on Mars? Scientists with NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover team are helping explore questions like that with the Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD.
A solar flare from AR 11944 emitted on January 7, 2014, seen in several different wavelengths of light from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. From right to left, the artificially-colored images show plasma at approximately 1 million degrees Fahrenheit, 4.5 million degrees Fahrenheit and 12.7 million degrees Fahrenheit. Credits: NASA/SDO.
Zipping through space at close to the speed of light, solar energetic particles, or SEPs, are one of the main challenges for the future of human spaceflight.
Clouds of these tiny solar projectiles can make it to Earth – a 93 million-mile journey – in under an hour.
They can fry sensitive spacecraft electronics and pose serious risks to human astronauts. But their onset is extraordinarily hard to predict, in part because we still don’t know exactly where on the Sun they come from.