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Solar Storm Sends Space
Crew Seeking Shelter
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=111100&ID=s878485
Baltimore Sun
11-12-00
 
 
A severe solar radiation storm this week prompted NASA to order astronauts aboard the International Space Station to take shelter in a more heavily shielded Russian-built section of the orbiting outpost.
 
The three crewmen remained in the aft end of the Zvezda module for about 12 hours before the warning was lifted. During that time, Russian scientists estimated, the crew received the equivalent of a week's normal radiation exposure.
 
"It wasn't life threatening, and they weren't projected to receive any exposures that would put them even close to their limits," said Michael Golightly, chief of space science at Johnson Space Center in Houston. "But we don't like them to get any extra exposure if we can help it."
 
The instructions to take shelter followed the eruption Wednesday evening of solar flare activity described as the fourth-largest solar radiation storm since 1976.
 
Rated an S-4 event by the federal Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo., the solar flare launched a torrent of high-energy protons toward the Earth at rates 100,000 times greater than normal.
 
An S-4 radiation event is defined as posing unavoidable radiation hazards to astronauts caught outside their spacecraft on space walks. Passengers and crew on commercial airliners flying over the arctic can receive exposures equivalent to 10 chest X-rays.
 
The radiation can also disrupt computer memories, star-tracking devices and solar panels on satellites, and black out high-frequency radio communications in polar regions.
 
An average of three such events are expected during each of the sun's 11-year cycles of activity. The current solar cycle is at its peak this year and next.
 
Chris Balch, a duty forecaster at the Space Environment Center on Friday, said this week's radiation storm began at 3:55 p.m. PST on Wednesday.
 
The flow, or "flux" of high-energy protons -- powerful enough to penetrate spacecraft -- quickly began to rise. It peaked just before midnight, measured at 347 particle flux units per second, per square centimeter.
 
"That's a very unusual event," Balch said. "The threshold when we wake people up about this is at one flux unit. It's rare that we even go above 100. That's why it really got our attention."
 
 
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