NASA has come to the world’s aid to avoid a potential threat to Internet access, better known as an Internet apocalypse, a situation that could shut down people’s Internet access for months or years, rendering satellites and power cables unusable.
The space agency recently launched a spacecraft as part of a project that aims to prevent a potential “internet apocalypse” that could prevent people from accessing the internet for months.
According toA mirrorthe US space agency’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) successfully passed through the solar wind and reached a critical milestone.
Scientists have issued a warning about the potential effects of an impending solar storm, sometimes known as the “internet apocalypse”, which could happen within the next ten years.
The spacecraft, launched in 2018, took an extraordinary journey that brought it very close to the sun’s surface, where the solar wind is produced.
The report says the solar wind is a steady stream of charged particles coming from the sun’s corona, its outermost atmosphere.
The PSP continued to collect essential data on the sun’s operations despite challenging conditions of extreme heat and radiation, such asBusiness standard reported.
Lead author of the study, University of California Professor Stuart Bale, discussed the importance of understanding the solar wind.
“Winds carry a lot of information from the sun to Earth. So understanding the mechanism behind the solar wind is important for practical reasons on Earth,” Bale said.
“This will affect our ability to understand how the sun releases energy and causes geomagnetic storms that are a threat to our communications networks,” he added.
Satellites and power lines can become useless as a result of such a situation, preventing people from using the Internet for months or even years.
Meanwhile, NASA has launched a brand new campaign giving the public the chance to have their name written on a microchip that will fly aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft in 2019.
In October 2024, the Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to fly by Jupiter and its moon Europa.