* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: South Atlantic Anomaly

Blobrana · L

Dead spacecraft helps map Bermuda Triangle of space

A European spacecraft has given us a detailed glimpse into a dangerous radiation zone a few hundred kilometres above the coast of Brazil.
The South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) is the point where the Van Allen radiation belts - rings of charged particles that surround Earth - come closest to the planet's surface. When the belts were discovered in the 1950s, scientists suspected the SAA could pose some risk.
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Blobrana · L

The High-Energy South Atlantic Anomaly Threatens Satellites

Much fanfare accompanied the Sept. 25, 2010, launch of the Air Force's Space Based Space Surveillance satellite.
Shortly after launch, the satellite passed over the South Atlantic, and things went awry. The satellite was hit by radiation that sent the sensors reeling and knocked out an electronics board payload. Suddenly, the expensive, specially-designed satellite could no longer do what it was built for.
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Blobrana · L

The South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) is an area where the Earth's inner Van Allen radiation belt comes closest to the Earth's surface. This leads to an increased flux of energetic particles in this region and exposes orbiting satellites to higher than usual levels of radiation. The effect is caused by the non-concentricity of the Earth and its magnetic dipole, and the SAA is the near-Earth region where the Earth's magnetic field is weakest.
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