Space Foundation
Biweekly Washington, D.C., Update for the Week Ending March 12, 2021
Written by: Hanh Le
This week, we celebrate International Women’s Day by recognizing the women who have played key roles in space programs around the globe. In Washington, DC, the Senate and House passed one of Congress’s largest economic relief bills, a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package, which President Biden is expected to sign on Friday.
The Moon is becoming the new economic frontier of the space economy.
By 2023, at least 11 nations plan to have landers, rovers, and scientific missions on the lunar surface.
The article discusses the potential of the cislunar economy, nations at the forefront, and planned cislunar missions. It is available here free of charge.
Solar winds: The material continously streams from the Sun out into space (Image: NASA)
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Solar winds are a continuous outflow of material from the Sun that mainly consist of protons and electrons.
The charged particles flow in a state known as plasma, which is imbued with the Sun s magnetic field.
According to the US Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), coronal holes produce solar winds of speeds between 500 and 800km per second.
However, different regions of the Sun can produce solar winds of various speeds and intensities.
The SWPC said: In the equatorial plane, where the Earth and the other planets orbit, the most common state of the solar wind is the slow speed wind, with speeds of about 400km per second.
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Previous studies have revealed that the Sun releases an extreme solar flare every 25 years on average, with the last Earth-hitting one coming in 1989.
This storm saw power outages in Quebec, Canada, as conducting rocks on Earth can carry the excess energy from the magnetic shield and plough it into the national grid.
On top of that, an intense solar storm can down satellite systems, as the bombardment of solar particles can expand Earth s magnetosphere, making it harder for satellite signals to penetrate.
While it is impossible to predict when and where a huge solar storm might hit, it is inevitable one will hit the planet in the future.
SPACE weather forecast: Another solar storm is set to hit Earth today following the strongest yet of the current solar cycle yesterday, as experts reveal we have entered the most geomagnetically active month of the year.