The lofty goals of NASA’s Artemis mission to bring the first woman and the next man to the moon by 2024 are moving forward, although that date has yet to be seen. However, new research has uncovered an interesting pattern of the most powerful event ever to emerge from the sun – a solar storm – which suggests that the final location may be more important than sticking to the date to avoid fighting the weather. The solar cycle of the Sun’s magnetic field lasts for about 11 years. We are currently at the beginning of the 25th cycle, the 25th cycle since people started recording them.
The solar minimum is the part of the cycle that has the most activity, but the solar maximum – set for July 2025 – is the most active, causing the sun’s magnetic poles to overturn, the sun to spot, and the particles to explode. New research published in the Journal of Solar Physics has shown that solar storms will occur either before or after most currents, depending on an odd or even number. If the cycles are equal, solar storms are more likely to occur at the beginning of the cycle, and if they are oddly numbered like cycle 25, then the weather at the final destination is more likely to occur at a later time, i.e., after the peak in 2025. Solar storms greatly affect the weather in space.
They can be dangerous for satellites, spacecraft and astronauts, so this kind of search is a warning. Depending on which cycle and which year away from the Earth’s protective magnetic field it can bring additional risks. Lead author Professor Mathew Owens, a space physicist at the University of Reading, said in a statement, “Until now, the most extreme space-weather events seemed to be random in their time and thus very little could be done to plan around them.” “However, this study seems to them to be more predictable, following the same‘season to ’of activities, usually as small events related to the weather of the place. But they also show some important differences in the most active seasons, which help us, avoid harmful effects of space-weather.”
