On February 3 2022, SpaceX shot 49 new Starlink satellites into orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, which made up group 4-7 of the constellation. Following a successful insertion, the rocket returned to the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. At first, all appeared to be going to plan.

Twenty four hours later, a minor geomagnetic storm, the phenomenon that causes the Northern Lights, as well as a handful of more disruptive effects including atmospheric drag, hit the Earth. As this crept higher into space, engineers from SpaceX frantically tried to adjust the inclination of its group 4-7 satellites to minimize the unexpected drag, but to no avail.

Thirty eight Starlink satellites were wrenched out of space, causing them to de-orbit uncontrollably. The event ended up costing the company $50 million in wasted hardware and launch costs.

The incident demonstrated the destructive power of space weather, the catch-all phrase for the flow of cosmic energy from the sun, has long captivated scientists and hobbyists.

Humanity’s increasing reliance on the satellite industry to dictate global communication, navigation, and security, have only served to magnify the relevance of these weather events.

With our orbital planes more populated than ever, astrophysicists say more such storms are likely to occur in future. And, worryingly, the scientific community’s ability to predict and explain them appears to be limited.

A Solar climate crisis

Space weather is measured in solar cycles, which usually last 11 years and encompass the time it takes for the sun to move from a period of minimum activity, as measured by the amount of sunspots on its surface, to a period of maximum activity.

The most chaotic solar cycle recorded was cycle 19, which saw the number of smoothed sunspots observed hit 285, the most ever recorded, in March 1958. The cycle caused periodic radio blackouts of military and civilian communications and red aurora displays over Europe and the US during its most active years, prompting hundreds of calls to the police and weather bureau from scared citizens, which jammed telephone circuits.

“No let-up was in sight,” reported the Chicago Daily Tribune on November 16, 1960. “Even as the bombardment hit, another gigantic eruption tore the sun’s surface and aimed another mass of particles earthward.”

The 2020s have encompassed the progression of solar cycle 25, an period of amplified solar activity beginning in 2019 that is expected to draw to a close in 2030. Contemporary solar cycles, starting with cycle 15 in 1914, are part of the Modern Maximum, an era of unusually high solar activity over the last century.

“In 2003, [during solar cycle 23] we saw very extreme space weather over the course of two weeks,” Juha-Pekka Luntama, head of the space weather division of the European Space Agency (ESA) told attendees at the Military Space Situational Awareness summit earlier this year. “Satellites suffered transient and permanent problems, as well as various ground-based damage to power grids and communications. With satellite reliance in its infancy then, disruption was limited. If we saw space weather of this severity today, the impact would be much bigger.”

Solar cycle 25 was initially predicted to be as weak as its predecessor, cycle 24, but solar activity has been much stronger than previously projected. Observations from the first three years of the cycle significantly exceeded estimated values. Our understanding of solar weather is still developing, and experts have mixed interpretations of the data available, with some suggesting cycle 25 peaked in July this year, and others suggesting a second peak is on the way in the late 2020s. Others believe solar cycle 26 has already started.

Similarly, the Modern Maximum is also thought to be ending, if it hasn’t already, with some experts warning that a new Centennial Gleissberg Cycle (CGC), a long-term period of high solar activity lasting 80-100 years, is ramping up, potentially peaking in cycle 28. The worst may be yet to come.

While significant uncertainty about the future remains, it is clear that solar activity is capable of causing significant disruption, and the need to be able to accurately predict it could become an existential issue.

What is the danger to satellites?

Although an uncommon occurrence, the list of dangers caused by space weather is daunting.

In addition to atmospheric drag piercing LEO space, Earth’s radiation belt can be changed by the injection of high-energy electrons, plunging geostationary satellites at high elevations into deep-space conditions, unshielding them from the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Even inside the relative protection of the planet’s orbits, radiation can damage electronics, charged particles from the sun can electrify the body of a spacecraft, potentially powering a discharge between two differently charged sections, and solar cells can be degraded faster during solar storms. A single space weather event can cause the same wear and tear as an entire year of normal operation.

“Star trackers can be blinded, geomagnetic disturbance can confuse magnetic field orientation systems, and onboard satellite software can fail,” Luntama told delegates at MSSA 2025. “Solar flares ionize the upper layers of the atmosphere, so that during a flare, satellite navigation signals on the day side of the atmosphere will completely disappear. There is no navigation solution during these moments, which can last from ten minutes to a couple of hours.”

This Pandora’s Box of hazards speaks to the relative immaturity of the space industry, which operates in an environment scientists still struggle to understand, let alone thrive in.

“I would say that there is now less experience among the satellite engineers and satellite operators about space weather effects because of the rather low solar activity impacting the Earth since the Halloween storms of 2003,” Luntama tells DCD. “The trend is to make satellites less expensive by using lower-cost components and having less redundancy onboard. We have not had very severe space weather for over 20 years now, so satellites have not been exposed to hard radiation environments during this time.”

What’s the worst that can happen?

At MSSA 2025, Luntama said damage from a single space weather event could cost Europe tens of billions of Euros, with global projections reaching more than €2 trillion.

“We’ve been conservative,” he assured attendees. “But other projections have been provocative.”

Such doom and gloom in tech tends to be the reserve of academics, though in this case, they’re not alone in making dour conclusions about the scope of the havoc space weather is capable of wreaking.

In March 2025, the insurer Lloyd’s of London released a report detailing the systemic risk scenario of a hypothetical solar storm, in which it charted a global economy roundly exposed to losses of $2.4 trillion over a five-year period, escalating to $9.1 trillion in its most severe projections.

Simon Machin, manager of the space weather programme at the British Met Office, is “uncertain” that satellite operators have taken on board the risk such severe events pose to their market. But, he says, “the evidence is out there and mounting.”

The report charts a hypothetical coronal mass ejection hitting the Earth directly, inducing an hour-long geomagnetic storm on a level with the most severe in recorded history; the 1859 Carrington Event. In this scenario, many satellites would be destroyed, creating widespread collision risks, and sensitive high-voltage component earthside fail. Cities lose power, and aviation and maritime shipping grind to a halt. Systemic ripple effects ensue.

Today, warning systems afford 20 minutes’ notice of coronal mass injections, a window the Met Office is seeking to extend to two hours with new warning satellites. Fortunately, coronal mass ejections usually fire into deep space, and much like rogue asteroids, are unlikely to be aimed squarely at the Earth.

Nonetheless, the concern is “that a big solar event could disable a large number of satellites and cause a major increase in the collision risk, particularly in the very busy LEO orbit domain,” Machin says. “We need to ensure that such an event does not risk our ability to continue using space in the future. “We need to always plan for space sustainability.”

Machin alludes to the danger of Kesseler Syndrome, a scenario in which debris density in low-Earth orbit becomes so great that the destruction of satellites and newly launched vehicles becomes probable, thereby multiplying debris density, resulting in unusable orbits, and trapping the human race on Earth for thousands of years.

While solar energetic particles can disrupt computers and memory chips on Earth, correction systems and emergency power should protect them.

During a solar event in May 2024, known as the Gannon Storm, power levels in transatlantic Internet cables “fluctuated” but didn’t fail, Machin recalls. He says: “Internet connections and access to data centers might suffer, but the real risk is blackouts [from failures in grid components].”

Concerns like this are usually alien to the blue-sky thinking of many within the space sector, but their colleagues in the world of satellite insurance make it their business to contend with such risk.

“The type of failures we typically see are where a satellite has not been designed or built correctly, such that a component of the satellite is left susceptible to the effects of space weather, due to say damage from charge build up or radiation,” David Wade, space underwriter at Atrium Space Insurance Consortium (ASIC) told DCD. “Space weather is often discussed as part of the initial briefings we receive or in a claims situation.

“To date, few space insurance claims have been solely attributable to space weather.”

The high-risk arena of satellite insurance has been built painstakingly, with talk of experienced insurers divesting from the business in the wake of Viasat’s $770 million insurance claim on the loss of its ViaSat-3 satellite in 2023. Wade claims the impact of a single claim on a geosynchronous satellite can wipe out the revenue from a year of premiums.

Economic impacts

With scientists struggling to understand the full complexity of space weather, it is no surprise that insurers are also building their knowledge of the phenomenon.

“The prediction of the maximum level of solar activity is far from a precise science,” ASIC’s Wade tells DCD. “The sun will still go through its 11-year cycle, and over time, we will see a general trend in the data as to whether the peak-to-peak values are increasing or decreasing.”

Indeed, the theory of a resurgent Centennial Gleissberg Cycle is disputed, with some scientists sounding more optimistic notes that our solar cycles are getting calmer. They point to the placid nature of recent cycles compared to mid-century counterparts, believing this confirms that the Modern Maximum has concluded, lending weight to theories of a new minimum period of nominal solar activity, which could arrive just in time for a golden age of 21st-century space expansionism.

Of course, optimists notoriously make for poor insurance salesmen. The durability of satellite parts is a topic that insurers have pressed manufacturers and operators on. Wade says it is common for space insurance policies to require a power margin to account for some degradation of a satellite’s solar array.

“The greater use of commercial, off-the-shelf, components and more advanced chipsets could see this sensitivity to space weather increase, and if it does, then the rise in claims will certainly result in increased premiums,” Wade says. Insurers, he says, take “a keen interest” in the robustness of these smaller pieces of hardware.

Space market enthusiasts never miss an opportunity to hail the power of falling costs of space launches and satellite manufacturing as a means of powering growth beyond Earth.

At the Satellite 2024 conference in Washington DC, Northern Sky Research’s research director Claude Rousseau complained: “For some people, it’s about putting something together, getting it launched, and hoping it works. That’s actually been a pervasive mindset of the new space economy.”

Wade mentions seeing testing cycles becoming shorter and shorter, replacing thermal vacuum tests with thermal-only tests, or testing only the first satellite off an assembly line, with the assumption that the rest coming down the conveyor will perform in the same way.

“Where issues do occur, it is usually due to a design defect or workmanship issue that leaves a satellite susceptible [to space weather],” Wade says. “Pre-launch testing remains of paramount importance, including testing for immunity to the effects of space weather.

“We already monitor some manufacturers for such aspects where the data shows a higher prevalence of these types of problems.”

Experts see the true risk in space to be from debris and orbital congestion, with space weather being one of many potential triggers to an escalating cataclysm rather than the primary threat itself.

“Without steps to address the sustainability of the space environment, insurers may not have the confidence to provide insurance cover, particularly for LEO satellites,” Wade says. “If the insurance is not available, the finance may not be available when it is required, and without a steady flow of finance, we could start to see some of the commercial developments in LEO stifled.”

How can we protect our planet?

At MSSA 2025, Machin pointed to the Gannon Storm as a useful wake-up call.

“Transatlantic flights had communications issues, and Starlink experienced significant strains,” he recounted. “UK power grid transformers sounded alarms, causing confusion among grid engineers, though it didn’t result in any power outages. In New Zealand, [alarm over the event resulted in] a re-engineering plan put in place to complement resilience to future geomagnetic damage. It was a best-case scenario, where no crises occurred, but the scope of the issue was illustrated clearly.”

This storm prompted almost 5,000 simultaneous satellite maneuvers, most of which were Starlink’s. A flurry of orbital activity carefully rechoreographed the intricate dance of thousands of LEO satellites, sidestepping new potential collision risks. Global maneuvering efforts were very successful, with most satellites “escaping relatively unaffected” according to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, though such performances will only get harder to orchestrate as orbital planes bulge at the seams, packed with satellites and space debris.

In the near future, in the congestion of tens of thousands of satellites from different nations unwilling to share information with one another, it’s easy to imagine how whole constellations being crippled and set adrift due to geomagnetic interference could cause chaos as correctional maneuvers direct satellites into new conjunction paths from other maneuvering satellites controlled by adversarial states.

“Improved spacecraft shielding, greater system redundancy and use of radiation-hardened components can all play a part in improving the resilience of satellites,” Machin tells DCD. But he warns that atmospheric drag, scintillation, and satellite communication loss can’t be factored out, and argues real mitigation will also take advanced forecasting, foolproof procedures, and an underlying sustainable orbital environment.

ESA’s Luntama emphasizes his organization’s work to set and maintain standards for the space environment informed by the hazards of space weather, as well as exploring the utility of in-orbit servicing technology, which is part of ESA’s Space Safety Programme.

“There will be a useful role for servicing craft to repair or refuel spacecraft to extend lifespan, whilst debris removal spacecraft could also play an increasingly important role in supporting our sustainable use of space,” Machin says.

It can be easy to worry about the existential potential that space weather possesses to create worldwide havoc, and the reckless mindsets that exacerbate it, though as the nature of the issue becomes better understood, the academics and insurers that are deeply ingrained in the modern space industry, are making clearer, louder appeals on the topic.

The disaster-capitalist tendency to contend with the seriousness of a problem only during and after crises occur has proven its redundancy, and the newness of the space industry offers a vital opportunity to ingrain cautious rhetoric in its culture. It may just save the world one day.

This feature first appeared in DCD Magazine issue 58. Register here to read the whole magazine free of charge.