Image: NASA and Shutterstock
What’s new: A paper from the Royal Aeronautical Society. The topic isn’t exactly new, but it has been a while since we have mentioned it as a huge threat to satellites, signals, and users.
Why it’s important:
- GNSS is essential to most societies and important to all. Yet extreme solar activity can deny signals and, worst case, damage satellites.
- Electrical grids and other tech are also essential and vulnerable. Many nations have not taken precautions and don’t have spare equipment to replace what might be damaged.
What else to know:
- The first mention of GNSS disruption in the UK Risk Register was in 2012 in conjunction with severe solar activity.
- If you search for “solar” on the RNT Foundation website, you will find quite a few references.
- This is another topic for which there is a lot of information available about the threat and what should be done, but it does not appear that much action has been taken to prevent massive damage when the ax falls, as it surely will.
- We really dislike being doomsayers all the time. But:
- We know some bad things will happen eventually.
- Yet it seems very difficult for people to act before bad things happen to either prevent or mitigate impacts. A preverse aspect of human nature.
- An example – There were over 140 commercial aircraft hijacked before 9-11. Yet few countries took concrete steps to improve airline security, or even reinforce cockpit doors, until after the twin towers fell and the world changed in very bad ways.
- The impact of a really severe solar event will be so much worse.
- We joined the Scouts at age 7 – motto “Be Prepared” – and spent 40 years in the US Coast Guard – motto “Semper Paratus” (Latin for “Always Prepared”). So that’s probably our problem…
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