There is something very odd happening high over South America and the nearby Atlantic Ocean, and NASA is on the case.
Meet with the South Atlantic Anomaly, a peculiar dent in Earth's magnetic field that is growing and dividing. It's been around for a long time, but over time that the anomaly has slowly changed. Although you'd never notice anything was wrong from the floor, for satellites, changes to the magnetic field that envelopes Earth can be a huge deal -- consequently NASA's interest from the anomaly and its activities.
The link comes since the magnetic field blocks charged particles spewed out by sunlight from reaching Earth. But in the South Atlantic Anomaly, the area is dented, lowering the protective barrier above that part of Earth. The decrease barrier means that radiation bombards satellites since they fly over this area, triggering intermittent shutdowns to prevent possible damage to the hardware, according to a NASA statement.
The International Space Station is just one of the many spacecraft that fly through the anomaly, but it also carries additional shielding to protect the astronauts who reside and work in orbit . Other spacecraft that fly throughout the anomaly send NASA valuable observations about the way in which the feature is shifting, like the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), which the bureau launched last year in part to track the weak place in the field after the retirement of its Solar, Anomalous, and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX) assignment in 2012. Among other changes, those observations have proven that the "dent" is shifting westward and splitting in two.
These observations are valuable because of the complexity of analyzing the magnetic field, which traces its roots to liquid metal moving inside the planet's core, then is shaped by a range of phenomena since it ripples out from the center of the planet, according to NASA.
Those interactions imply that more information about changes in the magnetic field can lead to a plethora of favorable results -- not just a better comprehension of what the anomaly is doing today in order to warn approaching satellites, but also more nuanced models of what is happening deep within the Earth, and naturally, more accurate predictions of how the anomaly will change in the future.
"Even though the SAA [South Atlantic Anomaly] is slow-moving, it is going through some change in morphology, so it's also important that people continue observing it by having continued assignments," Terry Sabaka, a geophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in the statement. "Because that is what helps us make predictions and models."
The link comes since the magnetic field blocks charged particles spewed out by sunlight from reaching Earth. But in the South Atlantic Anomaly, the area is dented, lowering the protective barrier above that part of Earth. The decrease barrier means that radiation bombards satellites since they fly over this area, triggering intermittent shutdowns to prevent possible damage to the hardware, according to a NASA statement.
The International Space Station is just one of the many spacecraft that fly through the anomaly, but it also carries additional shielding to protect the astronauts who reside and work in orbit . Other spacecraft that fly throughout the anomaly send NASA valuable observations about the way in which the feature is shifting, like the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), which the bureau launched last year in part to track the weak place in the field after the retirement of its Solar, Anomalous, and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX) assignment in 2012. Among other changes, those observations have proven that the "dent" is shifting westward and splitting in two.
These observations are valuable because of the complexity of analyzing the magnetic field, which traces its roots to liquid metal moving inside the planet's core, then is shaped by a range of phenomena since it ripples out from the center of the planet, according to NASA.
Those interactions imply that more information about changes in the magnetic field can lead to a plethora of favorable results -- not just a better comprehension of what the anomaly is doing today in order to warn approaching satellites, but also more nuanced models of what is happening deep within the Earth, and naturally, more accurate predictions of how the anomaly will change in the future.
"Even though the SAA [South Atlantic Anomaly] is slow-moving, it is going through some change in morphology, so it's also important that people continue observing it by having continued assignments," Terry Sabaka, a geophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in the statement. "Because that is what helps us make predictions and models."