“Before becoming an astronaut, I heard many stories about astronauts who saw white flashes of radiation during their spacewalk,” says Terry Wirths, a former NASA astronaut. On the fifth night of his maiden flight - the mission on Space Shuttle Endeavor in 2010 - when it was time for sleep, “I closed my eyes - and boom! A giant, white, dazzling flash appeared before my eyes, and I did not hear anything."
The more entrepreneurs are confronted with space travel - like SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who recently launched his Falcon Heavy rocket in Florida - the more often they encounter unusual phenomena like the one described above.
One of the strangest phenomena is the one witnessed by Wirths. This is the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), which is a massive flare with no sound. But SAA isn't just a weird sight. It damages computers in the vicinity and exposes people nearby to increased levels of radiation. For this he was called the "cosmic Bermuda triangle".
As manned space travel becomes more prevalent and astronauts increasingly rely on computers, the problems posed by SAA can only get worse.
To understand SAA, you first need to understand the Van Allen radiation belts. These are two zones of charged particles in the shape of a torus that surround the Earth and are held in place by its magnetic field. “The sun is sending out a huge amount of radiation,” says Wirths, “and a lot of particles like electrons are shot from the surface of the sun. All this material also comes from space, and the Sun's magnetic field can redirect it. Once on Earth, it is captured by the magnetic field and forms these radiation belts in space."
The good news is that the Van Allen belts protect the Earth from the charged electron particles thrown by the sun. The bad news is there is one but.
The earth is not quite round; it is slightly convex in the middle. The Earth's magnetic poles also do not correspond to the geographic poles, so they are shifting, and with them the Van Allen belts. SAA is born where Van Allen's inner radiation belt is at its lowest point and closest to Earth. Due to the tilt, the magnetic field is strongest in the north, and the area over the South Atlantic and Brazil is in the path of the Van Allen belt.
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For the Earth, this does not pose any danger. But it does damage to any satellites and other vehicles like the International Space Station that pass through the area, and to people on board. Wirts well remembered his 2010 flight and the time he spent on the ISS in 2014.
The white flares reported by astronauts also affect computers. “We have acronyms for all the events at NASA,” says Wirths. “And there is SEU - solitary disorders. This acronym means that the computer blinks, and they happen quite often."
“There is a well-known area in which different types of satellites - not only a space station with humans, but also conventional communications satellites - face challenges,” he adds. "At such moments, you want to fly as fast as possible."
For example, the Hubble Space Telescope at such times cannot carry out astronomical observations, flying through such a region.
How can the vehicles and passengers protect themselves from this radiation flux? Water is the best protection, Wirts says. Astronauts on the ISS are using a "water wall". “It's just 23kg bags of water,” he says. They are wrapped around the sleep zones of astronauts.
Radiation is closely monitored during space travel. “There are several electronic detectors that simply read radiation bursts and send the data back to Earth,” says Wirths. “Each of us has a radiation monitor for the entire time we are in space. I kept it in my pocket throughout the mission, every time. Even going out into space, I took it with me in my pocket."
This battle between the Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind exhibits another curious effect: the aurora. It is caused by highly charged particles from the sun hitting the Earth's atmosphere, giving rise to a greenish glow.
On Earth, people travel thousands of kilometers to see the polar lights. But on the ISS they are best seen. “From space, the aurora borealis are very different from the aurora borealis,” says Wirths. "Aurora Borealis from the perspective of the ISS has always been a thin strip somewhere in the distance, and the Aurora Borealis has always been a large cloud that is closer to the station."
Throughout his 215 days in space, this picture has always remained with him. “You fly and see giant green and red dancing clouds. There is nothing like this on Earth."
No matter how beautiful this species is, the more common space missions and flights become, the further the probes go, the more robustly the spacecraft must withstand SAA and radiation exposure.
“As we move deeper into the solar system and further from Earth, we will become less dependent on the mission control center to provide us with instant help,” says Wirths. “We may have to wait a few minutes because of the speed of light to get an answer. We will need computers with artificial intelligence and the like."
And the more powerful a computer is, the more vulnerable it will be to radiation problems. Finding protection will be very important for future space exploration.
Ilya Khel