Rapid Assessment of Solar Flare Impacts

Although space-based systems are built to endure harsh environments, certain conditions may still degrade or damage these systems. Environmental events in space and their effects can be critical for civil and military end-users who rely on space-based systems. A single event may not damage a system, but multiple events, even at low level, can compound to cross a system's degradation threshold. Solar flares and the associated X-ray events may act with cumulative effects to damage space systems. Mitigation strategies for environmental radiation are part of spacecraft designs. We have systems to quantify the intensity of flares and models to identify potential system degradation. However, solar flare identification methods relate single event strength to effects and do not account for the cumulative effects from multiple events. Here we present a novel method for determining degradation from compounding X-Ray radiation effects on space assets. This approach leverages the duration of idealized flares by comparing their combined strength over time to different levels of system degradation thresholds, then relating these events to the current flare classification system. The result is a duration- based approach that enables end-users to determine impact severity from X-Ray events quickly.