Nasa scientist tells of nerves for shuttle astronauts

Magnetic activity by the sun has a huge effect on communications, radio, power supplies and even the future of space travel, a Nasa scientist told a Dublin audience today as his colleagues waited nervously for space shuttle Discovery’s return.

Dr Peter Gallagher was at Dublin City University (DCU) to talk about his work with the Soho spacecraft, a space telescope one million miles from earth, with a permanent view of the sun.

The billion-euro telescope, which is a collaboration between Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA), has been sending back real-time images of the sun’s activity over the past decade.

The Soho project is due to be decommissioned over the next few years, as it is superseded by a new Nasa space craft.

“The big thing Soho did was show us how active the sun is on a day to day basis: the volumes of material it is flinging out were a real eye-opener,” Dr Gallagher said.

Dr Gallagher, who currently works at the Goddard Space Flight Centre but will be taking up a lecturing post at DCU, was showing the Astronomy Ireland audience films sent back from the telescope including images of “sunquakes” which ripple across the sun’s surface.

He said understanding the activity of the sun was crucial for aiding radio, submarine and airforce communications and had an impact on everyday life.

In the past the entire pager network in the US has been brought down by a solar flare, while similar activity took out a power grid in Quebec, Canada, for several hours.

Dr Gallagher said the sun’s activity also affected space travel, as outside the earth’s magnetic field a solar flare could deliver a fatal dose of radiation to astronauts.

“If astronauts are going to the moon, they are going to be completely unprotected.

“It will be even worse if we’re going to Mars, which doesn’t have a magnetic field, because one of these flares will cause fatalities,” he warned.

When there were regular flights to the moon in the 1970s there was an occasion when a potentially fatal solar flare occurred just a week after a mission returned, he said.

Dr Gallagher said projects such as Soho could be used to monitor and predict solar activity, giving astronauts a chance to shelter in magnetically-protected areas of their space-craft or turn the engines to face the sun to absorb the radiation.

But over the next 24 hours Nasa scientists have a more immediate concern - ensuring the safe return of the space shuttle Discovery.

Dr Gallagher said he had been at Nasa last week and said most people were quite positive about the craft and crew’s safe return.

“People are really nervous, the whole agency is really nervous, not only for the human element and possible loss of life, but it really is a metric for how well they have dealt with the dangers.”

But he said: “This is the safest mission that has ever gone up – we’ve spent 1.5 billion in the past two-and-a-half years since Colombia.”

“The damage that has occurred is less than any other mission.”

Looking beyond Soho, Dr Gallagher said new spacecraft being launched included the ESA’s Solar Orbiter, which will fly almost into the sun itself, sending back technological data as it goes.