Space weather warnings could be received hours before Earth is hit rather than minutes with the help of a miniature UK-built instrument soon to be stationed in deep space.
MAGIC (MAGnetometer from Imperial College) is part of the European Space Agency's Heliospheric Pioneer for Solar and Interplanetary Threats Defence (HENON) CubeSat mission, which is scheduled for launch in early 2027.
By measuring the Sun's magnetic field much farther upstream than current real-time space weather monitors, the mission aims to extend advance warning of severe solar storms from just tens of minutes to several hours.
The research is being presented at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting this week in Birmingham by Jonathan Eastwood, Professor of Space Physics in the Department of Physics (Blackett Laboratory) at Imperial College London.
"I am really excited to be working on the HENON mission because it paves the way for a dramatic improvement in our ability to respond to severe space weather," said Professor Eastwood.
Space weather is caused by activity on the Sun, including solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – huge eruptions of magnetised plasma that travel through space. When these eruptions reach Earth, they can trigger geomagnetic storms capable of disrupting satellites, communications, navigation systems and power grids.
While scientists can already forecast when a CME is likely to arrive at Earth, predicting how severe its effects will be is much more difficult. That depends on the magnetic field carried by the eruption, which can only be measured directly as it travels through space.
At present, operational space weather forecasts rely on spacecraft positioned at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point, around 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. For the fastest CMEs, this gives forecasters only around 15 minutes' warning time.
HENON will take a different approach. The CubeSat will travel to a special orbit that carries it to around 15 million kilometres upstream of Earth – ten times farther from Earth than L1 – allowing it to sample the solar wind much earlier.
"From a technology point of view, this is an exciting mission because it will be the first time that our miniaturised MAGIC instrument will fly in deep space, measuring the interplanetary magnetic field," said Professor Eastwood.
MAGIC, developed at Imperial College London and funded by the UK Space Agency, will measure the magnetic field within the solar wind as it streams away from the Sun. Together with two other instruments designed by scientists in the Czech Republic and Finland, MAGIC will provide the measurements needed to test whether earlier and more accurate space weather forecasting is possible.
If successful, HENON could extend advance warning of the most severe geomagnetic storms by a factor of ten, from around 15 minutes to two or three hours, giving satellite operators, power grid managers and other users much more time to prepare for the effects of major space weather events.
"The success of HENON will be a step change in our ability to forecast space weather, and paves the way for a future operational space weather mission, SHIELD, that is being developed by the European Space Agency," said Professor Eastwood.
The SHIELD mission would provide continuous early warning of potentially hazardous solar storms much farther upstream than current spacecraft.
HENON is a technology demonstration mission managed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and is scheduled to launch in early 2027 as a secondary payload on the same rocket as ESA's PLATO mission.
ENDS