[amsat-bb] question for the experts

[Douglas Cole <n7bfs@xxxxxxxxx>]

I guess I will break my silence on this and ask a question that has been bugging
me and hopefully those that are more knowledgeable will be able to answer for me
.

As I seem to recall in my surfing ( does anyone do that anymore ) around on the
web that I came up with some info about a rather large CME event ( coronal mass
ejection ) that ended up coming right at good 'ole planet earth , this one
seemed to be one that caught the eye of a lot of scientists , or at least it
made the rounds on the web , as I found a website , which I have since lost ,
that had full length .mpeg movies in the different spectral ranges of the CME
event , quite the display and I was able to download the 32meg file (thanks to
whoever invented DSL) for later playback .....

Now this CME if I recall happened before AO-40 went silent , so my very big
brain started doing what it likes to do , it thought about it over and over
again and hoped that this big CME wouldn't raise hail and terror with our new
'sat ......

My real question is this , as we have been talking about 'rad hardened chips and
the like , how do satellites of any kind handle things like these CME events ? ,
it would seem to me that these things could be of a much greater danger to any
satellite than even leonids type damage ?  Is this something that has been a
known but tolerable risk with satellites and could this possibly cause a
corruption of data on any satellite ?

Ok , now really I am not speculating as to what caused AO-40 to be in the shape
it is in , but dangit , I had the desire to ask this on the very day that ao-40
went silent , and felt real creepy to even try once I found that it did go
silent , so here I am hoping that I won't get nuked for asking , I am really
curious as to what if any effects these CME's have on things up there :^}
They seem like such serious things , yet not much in the alarmist media is made
of them ....

tia


Ok , I go now and run and hide ;^}

--  
Douglas Cole   N7BFS
AMSAT#26182 , K2 # 544
Spokane IRLP node 145.250 owner
http://www.users.qwest.net/~cdoug3
Registered Linux user # 188922
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