[FunnyBadger]

This is simply part of the solar cycle. And it's a standard part of satellite planning when it comes to operational quality and reliability to account for solar cycle radiation effects.

This is an ignorant fear article and/or an article written by someone who knows NOTHING about space launch and design.

(I used to be a military rocket scientist specializing in radiation effects on space electronics many moons ago).

[pdabbadabba]

The article could be much clearer about this but no, this isn’t just about the standard solar cycle. The issue is that the sun has been more active in this portion of the solar cycle than predicted, resulting in greater atmospheric mass in LEO than anticipated. Planners knew that the cycle was ramping up, but may have underestimated its intensity.

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.

[KennyBlanken]

The article at length describes how this solar cycle is different from prior cycles and forecasts.

> 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."

[walrus01]

I concur with this, and also, one possible solution to this from a technical perspective is to increase the amount of fuel carried for ion/hall effect and similar thrusters (high specific impulse, low thrust) for periodic orbit raising maneuvers to extend lifetime.

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...

[dylan604]

>(I used to be a military rocket scientist specializing in radiation effects on space electronics many moons ago).

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.

[kmbfjr]

>By coincidence (or beginner's luck), the onset of the new space revolution came during that sleepy solar cycle.

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.

[ngcc_hk]

Exactly. The issue is you cannot easy say “unexpected”. Whilst we cannot account for everything and there could be something new like mercury orbit is “unexpected” and not due to Vulcan (as suspected in one stage there is another planet inside its orbit).

Really what is unexpected.