Proposed New Mission Will Create Artificial Solar Eclipses In Space
The sun's outer atmosphere, known as the solar corona, is a fascinating yet challenging region to study. It's from this layer that coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and other adverse space weather events originate, which can have significant impacts on Earth. An international team of researchers, including experts from the University of Surrey and Aberystwyth University, is developing a groundbreaking mission called Mesom. This mission aims to recreate total solar eclipse conditions in space, offering a unique opportunity to study the solar corona in unprecedented detail.
The Need for Improved Understanding
Solar storms, a type of space weather event, can disrupt vital technologies on Earth. When magnetic fields and electrically charged particles collide with Earth's magnetic field, they create solar storms. The current intense solar storm, one of the strongest in two decades, highlights the importance of understanding these events to protect our technology-dependent world.
In 1989, a coronal mass ejection (CME) caused a nine-hour electricity blackout in Quebec, Canada, demonstrating the potential economic impact of such events. Similarly, in 2024, a series of solar eruptions affected thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit, causing GPS outages that cost US farmers an estimated $500 million. The Carrington Event in 1859, caused by a CME, resulted in electrical shocks and small fires in telegraph offices across North America and Europe, underscoring the potential consequences of such events.
Mesom: Creating Artificial Solar Eclipses
The Mesom mission, led by the UK, aims to recreate total solar eclipse conditions in space. During total solar eclipses, the Moon covers the Sun's visible surface, revealing the solar corona. By creating similar conditions in space, researchers can study the corona's physical processes at different timescales and wavelengths, leading to better space weather forecasting.
Overcoming Challenges
Total solar eclipses are rare and brief, lasting only a few minutes. Ground-based measurements are limited by weather conditions and atmospheric distortions. To overcome these challenges, scientists have used coronagraphs, telescopes with occulting disks to block the Sun's radiation. However, even space-based coronagraphs like the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (Lasco 3) onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (Soho 4) cannot capture the deepest layers of the Sun's atmosphere.
Natural Occulters: A Celestial Approach
Mesom takes a different approach by using celestial bodies as natural occulters. The idea is to fly a spacecraft in the shadow of a celestial object, like the Moon, to measure the corona down to the Sun's chromosphere. The Moon's near-perfect sphere and lack of a thick atmosphere make it an ideal natural occulting disk.
Mesom's Potential
Mesom is a mini-satellite mission that will collect high-quality measurements of the inner Sun corona once a month for up to 48 minutes. This is a significant improvement over the sporadic total solar eclipses on Earth. The mission is funded by the UK Space Agency and has grown into an international consortium led by UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory, with partners from Spain, the US, and Australia.
The project has been submitted to the European Space Agency for consideration and is proposed to launch in the 2030s, offering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study the Sun's atmosphere and improve our understanding of space weather.
