Solar Shield watches the Sun so that operators on orbit and on the ground are never surprised by it. Flares, coronal mass ejections and high-energy particle storms change the environment satellites fly through, disturb navigation and radio links, expose crews and airline passengers to radiation and can stress terrestrial power grids. The programme detects these events early, translates them into concrete effects per asset and issues protective actions before the storm arrives.
- Flare, CME and particle-storm detection with arrival forecasting
- Per-spacecraft dose, charging and drag effect modelling
- Automated safe-mode and payload protection recommendations
- Advisories for aviation, navigation and grid operators
Solar and heliospheric monitoring
Solar imagery, magnetograph data, solar-wind measurements and particle counters are ingested continuously. Machine-learned classifiers flag active regions with eruption potential and estimate arrival time and severity of an event at Earth, hours to days ahead depending on the phenomenon.
Effect modelling per asset
A generic storm warning is of little use in operations. Solar Shield maps each event to the individual spacecraft: expected total ionising dose, single-event-upset probability, surface and deep charging risk, thermospheric expansion and the resulting drag change on the orbit.
Protective actions
The system recommends and, where authorised, schedules safe-mode transitions, high-voltage payload shutdowns, attitude changes that reduce exposed surfaces, and re-planning of manoeuvres and ground contacts around the disturbed window.
Ground and air effects
The same event picture supports terrestrial users: GNSS accuracy degradation, HF blackout regions for polar flight routes, radiation advisories for high-altitude aviation and geomagnetically induced current risk for grid operators.
Recovery and post-event analysis
After the storm the programme reconstructs what each asset actually experienced, compares it with the forecast and feeds the difference back into the models, so every event makes the next warning more precise.