Media opportunity at European Space Weather Week 2018, 5-9 November, University KU Leuven, Belgium
ESA is co-hosting/co-sponsoring European Space Weather Week 2018, Europe’s largest scientific conference dedicated to space weather, which will see 300+ scientists, engineers, policy makers, industry and academics from worldwide sharing their latest findings and most recent knowledge.
Topics include solar & heliophysics, space weather monitoring, space weather effects, mitigation, the development of the ESA-led Space Weather Information Network, &etc.
More information via
http://www.stce.be/esww15
ESA and space weather
Under the Agency’s Space Safety activities (http://www.esa.int/ssa ), ESA is leading the development of the world’s largest Space Weather Services Network, based at ROB Brussels, and now offering almost 200 value-added space weather ‘products’ such as applications and processed data sets aimed at/for industry, academia, scientific use and civil authorities. These products are fed into the Network not only from ESA’s own missions but also from about 40 European and international partnersESA is now planning the Lagrange mission (launch mid-2020s; http://www.esa.int/ssal5 ) to provide real-time monitoring of the Sun to detect hazardous solar activity such as flares and coronal mass ejections before these reach Earth, affecting satellites in orbit such as navigation, telecom and weather, or infrastructure on ground such as power grids or data networks.
According to a recent estimate, a single major space weather event could cause €16 billion economic damage to Europe (http://bit.ly/2F0P3qx ).
In 2012, the Sun ejected a coronal mass ejection that just missed Earth. It was estimated to be at least as powerful as the famous 1859 Carrington event. If it had hit Earth, it would have severely disrupted satellite-based services and infrastructure on ground.
In 1989, space weather caused a 9-hr blackout that affected >6 million people. Some satellites went out of control for several hours.
In 2003, solar activity is thought to have caused the loss of Japan’s ADEOS II satellite.
Media opportunities
To request interviews via telephone or Skype, please contact:
Daniel Scuka Space Safety Communication Coordinator dscuka@esa.int +491702863718
Media wishing to conduct interviews on site are welcome and upon request can be paired with an appropriate interview partner in a wide variety of languages.
