As activity ramps up on the sun in its current cycle, The star in the center of our solar system is exploding with energy, advancing dangerous flares towards the planets. Earlier on August 19, a storm arrived close to Earth which killed the Galaxy-15 broadcast satellite operated by an international satellite firm.
The incident occurred when the satellite was knocked out due to an extreme space weather event. However, the firm informed spacenews.com that it is trying to regain control of the satellite.
The satellite is furnished with 24 C-band transponders that served to media customers along with L-band payload which was earlier used by the US Federal Aviation Administration to relay GPS information to aircraft. It was developed by Northrop Grumman, the company is going through the procedure of offloading its customers to another satellite.
In the last few weeks, the Sun has been reacting immensely energetically during which 17 coronal mass ejections were observed, along with 19 solar flares and 11 sunspots. AR3085 is one among several sunspots that have been observed popping up on the surface which has increased by 10-times in just two days.
This is not the first time that space weather has caused death to satellites. SpaceX lost a batch of 40 Starlink satellites to a sudden alteration in the space environment earlier this year.
Space environment experiences changes when storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at low deployment altitudes to increase. The upsurge of speed and intensity of the storm causes atmospheric drag to rise up to 50 percent higher.
