Europe inaugurates new facility to save Earth from solar storms, asteroids & space debris

European Space Agency’s (ESA) Director-General Josef Aschbacher, on April 12, inaugurated a new facility- Space Safety Centre- dedicated to monitoring space weather, potentially hazardous asteroids and space debris. In a new report, ESA said that our planet lives close to a star that is surrounded by ancient and fast-moving asteroids alongside discarded satellites and their debris which pose a lot of challenges. Through this facility, scientists would carry out the activities necessary to mitigate and avoid any mishaps owing to these hazards.

(ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and Director Rolf Densing inaugurate new Space Safety Centre; Image: ESA)

Currently, the study of space weather, including a solar storm, is necessary because electromagnetic radiation and charged particles spewed toward Earth can damage activated satellites. Astronauts and even infrastructure on Earth such as power grids too are prone to the threat. The agency said that it is the data from these satellites and from other space weather services which enables it to protect spacecraft and astronauts from the sun's unpredictable outbursts. 

Speaking at the inauguration, ESA's Director of Operations Rolf Densing said, "A major space weather event could cause in excess of €15 billion damage in Europe. We cannot prevent space weather, but costly ground infrastructure and satellites – and the critical services they provide – can be protected through forecasts, timely warnings and real-time information". 

ESA's future space safety missions 

Currently, the European agency is working on three major space safety missions- Vigil, Hera and ClearSpace-1. ESA's Vigil mission is being developed to keep an eagle eye on the 'side' of the Sun in order to monitor its violent and unpredictable outbursts. Targeted for launch no earlier than 2028, the Vigil spacecraft will provide near real-time data on hazardous solar activity, complementing observations from other missions and enabling more accurate forecasting of space weather impacts.

The agency says the Vigil "will give us advance warning of oncoming solar storms and therefore more time to protect spacecraft in orbit, vital infrastructure on the ground and space explorers now and in the future not shielded by Earth's magnetic field". 

Next up is the Hera mission, which is scheduled for launch in 2024. It will examine the aftermath of the first kinetic impact test of asteroid deflection, carried out by NASA’s DART mission, which was launched last year. ESA says that Hera will be humankind’s first probe to rendezvous with a binary asteroid system and fully validate a planetary defence technique. The third is the ClearSpace-1, which is currently under development for launch in 2026. This mission is dedicated to removing a piece of space debris-- a 112 kilograms of derelict object. As the name suggests, this mission is to demonstrate the technologies needed for debris removal and ensuring a clean low-Earth orbit (LEO). 

Image: Twitter/@esaoperations