Space weather effects and human technology

The varying conditions of the solar-terrestrial environment are often referred to by the term “space weather”. As human activities in space and near-space have increased in recent decades, space weather has emerged as a growing concern for both civilian and military users. Powerful disturbances from the Sun and subsequent changes in Earth's vicinity (known as “geospace”) can cause important, sometimes fatal, effects in technological systems. In this presentation, we discuss several of the key types of impacts of adverse space weather on space systems and operations. We analyze several of the most significant threats and we examine the physical mechanisms that can cause system or subsystem failures. We show how combined observations of the solar-terrestrial environment and large-scale modeling have the potential to avert some of the most deleterious space weather consequences. We also discuss briefly how these methods might be extended to addressing space weather in a broader planetary or solar system context.