The Space Weather Problem, How West Point Aims to Assist Soldiers in Arctic Ops

By Jorge Garcia, Public Affairs SpecialistApril 6, 2024

Photo Courtesy of NASA
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Photo courtesy of Roland Bigler
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Class of 2026 Cadet Claire Qinglang.
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Class of 2026 Cadet Larry Bolt
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The PLASMA team's laboratory Langmuir Probe. Photo by Jorge Garcia/ USMA PAO.
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The PLASMA team's laboratory Langmuir Probe. Photo by Jorge Garcia/ USMA PAO.
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he vacuum chamber the PLASMA team used to test their laboratory probe. Photo by Jorge Garcia/USMA PAO.
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The vacuum chamber the PLASMA team used to test their laboratory probe. Photo by Jorge Garcia/USMA PAO.
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Imagine the spectacle of a solar flare erupting from the Sun's incredible mass. The explosive burst of radiation released from magnetic energy towers 66,000,000 feet into the vast expanse above. From this monstrous explosion emerges an average sunspot the size of our humble blue planet.

Now, think about a common task you would accomplish in eight minutes. Perhaps it is watering the flowers in your small garden. At the last second, when the final drop of water splashes on your flower petal, the light from the solar flare has already reached Earth.

Here is another exercise in thought: imagine yourself seated in a plane ready to embark on an 18-hour flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Singapore. Your flight spans 9,520 miles across continents and oceans.

And yet, as your aircraft descends on the landing strip at Singapore Airlines, a cosmic drama unfolds above. The Sun, in its ceaseless volatility, has unleashed a solar storm of epic proportions—a coronal mass ejection (CME) traveling through space at over 1 million miles per hour, spanning an astonishing 93 million miles within 15 to 18 hours, colliding with Earth's magnetic field.

The impact is felt on Earth as the collision triggers a geomagnetic storm that has disrupted radio communications, satellites, and power grids. In the chaos of this cosmic event, military personnel engaged in critical operations may find themselves in the mercy of other-worldly forces beyond their control.

"When we talk about space weather or solar storms, we often start with the sun," said Delores Knipp, a research professor of space physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. "I would say that the Sun is responsible for 95% of the aggravation that the Department of Defense (DOD) and civilian colleagues feel in terms of space impacts."

This phenomenon is part of a vast frontier in space weather research the U.S. military and other scientific institutions have explored for decades, with the military experiencing critical space weather disturbances that date as far back as the Vietnam War.

But to grasp space weather's impact on current military operations, we must explore historical events that unveil its dangers and perplexities.

One event took place on Aug. 4, 1972. At the time, the space weather community observed a particularly intense knot of magnetism relatively aligned between the Sun and the Earth, which meant that if a solar storm erupted, it would likely collide with our planet.

Not only did it erupt, it discharged incredible amounts of energy, sending plasma toward Earth. Initially, the solar storm's first burst moved slowly, plowing through what's called the interplanetary medium of space's cosmic vacuum.

For example, picture strong gusts of wind or torrents of rain slowing down a car along the road trying to reach its destination. Similarly, the mass energy spread through the interplanetary medium has a similar effect on a solar storm tearing its way through space to collide with our planet.

However, according to a research paper written by Knipp in 2018, the energy that shot rapidly behind the initial burst bulldozed its way through the interplanetary medium, reaching Earth in "record time—14.6 hours." When it collided with Earth's magnetic field, it created so much disturbance that intense currents manifested, producing disturbances with many U.S. power grids.

"Nothing went down, at least in the U.S. But shortly behind that, that material was coming so fast that it caused Earth's magnetic field to set up in an oscillation and the whole field was just ringing," Knipp said.

Meanwhile, former President Richard Nixon was trying to end the Vietnam War, and he had authorized the Navy to set sea mines all along Haiphong Harbor to disrupt the flow of war material into the harbor for distribution.

The Navy had never operated at low latitudes when setting up sea mines until this point. They were usually planted at mid-latitudes. Because of this, they did not know how to input the correct settings for the oscillation frequency.

Think of oscillation in terms of back and forward movement or a pattern in nature that tends to repeat itself. Consider the Pendulum swings in a clock, ocean waves rolling in and out on a beach, or string instruments that, when strummed, produce music.

In this case, scientists refer to oscillation through the rapid back-and-forth movement of atoms or fluctuations of electromagnetic waves.

Following this framework, seamen made their estimations, unaware that the Sun caused the magnetosphere to oscillate at a frequency that was similar to what the mines would interpret as a small boat drifting along the ocean.

Soon after, the solar storm jolted Earth's magnetosphere, triggering 4,000 sea mines to explode.

"Also, before all of that happened, the material, as it was flowing from the sun, energized so many particles in the interplanetary medium that many of our spacecraft were essentially blinded by these extremely energetic relativistic particles," Knipp said.

"And so, between that and the loss of communication, DOD just really did not know what had happened," she added. "It took a very long time to figure it out and part of what they figured out is in the paper that I wrote."

Titled "On the Little-Known Consequences of the 4 August 1972 Ultra-Fast CME ...," the 2018 research paper expounded on this moderately-known yet impactful incident, providing insight to those seeking to develop defensive measures against a future collision.

"We believe if that kind of event happened again, it would be pretty disruptive to global positioning or global navigation services," Knipp said. "And so, that is where Diana's work comes in."

Col. Diana Loucks, the director of advanced physics at the U.S. Military Academy, is currently working with a group of 13 cadets, known as the PLASMA team, to create a device that can potentially help the Army measure the scale of space weather events.

For example, when one hears that an earthquake took place and it measured at 2.0 on the Richter scale, there is no grounds for alarm. However, if the earthquake scales at 7.0, safety measures are implemented to defend against its destructive nature.

"... We understand that there are (space weather) impacts on GPS," Loucks said. "We're trying to quantify those and we're putting together a methodology to develop an index, much like the Richter scale, that gives you that same pause."

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), there are three categories of space weather events: Geomagnetic Storms, Solar Radiation Storms and Radio Blackouts. Each category uses a global scale from one to five to identify the magnitude of space weather events, with one representing a minor impact and five an extreme.

"... At the time, the biggest natural disaster in the history of the U.S. was Hurricane Katrina, which in dollars of that time was something like $108 billion," said Mark Miesch, a research scientist at NOAA. "An extreme solar storm and its effect on the power grid alone could be twice that or five times that, or even 10 times that."

Miesch added that these extreme space weather events, while rare, can have a catastrophic effect on the nation.

Yet, the scale does not need to be extreme to impact an Army operation.

An example of this took place on the morning of March 4, 2002, during the Afghanistan deployment to neutralize the terrorist organization Al-Queda.

The mountainous Afghan landscape awoke to the whirring sound of an MH-47E Chinook helicopter transporting 21 U.S. Army Rangers on a rescue mission to Takur Ghar mountain.

The mission required the extraction of a Navy Seals team who had been shot down earlier by Al Queda forces at the snow-topped summit of the mountain.

Unbeknown to Army Rangers at the time, they were headed towards the same compromised location where Al Queda forces held enemy control of the summit and shot down the Navy Seals team.

Radio operators from Bagram, Afghanistan, tried, in vain, to warn the U.S. Rangers of the inaccurate coordinates they were using to find the Navy Seals team. This communication error resulted in Al Queda shooting down the chinook with a Rocket Propelled Grenade, killing three men and turning the rescue operation into a 17-hour firefight.

However, in 2014, it was later discovered that those radio disruptions were caused by a combination of interference between the mountainous peaks and a space weather-related occurrence called "plasma bubbles."

In the context of Earth's atmosphere, plasma bubbles can negatively impact radio signals and Global Navigation Satellite Solutions (GNSS) by hindering the way signals traverse Earth's atmosphere.

The excess interference of the plasma bubbles during the Battle of Takur Ghar proved a cautionary exemplar of how space weather can aid the enemy, but how does this example tie into modern military operations?

Currently, the Army is directing much of its strategic efforts towards the Arctic Circle in the far north region of Alaska.

According to the Army publication, "2021 U.S. Army Regaining Arctic Dominance,” the Arctic is "... a potential corridor for strategic competition."

Based on the northern Arctic topography, Russia holds a strategic position among the five Arctic coastal states and aims to influence the Arctic by directing aspects of Northern Sea Route transit undeterred by established international laws.

Additionally, global warming continues to thaw the ice sheets, creating new routes for maritime travel, which may lead to global disputes.

Thus, the Army is developing a new doctrine titled, "Army Techniques Publication 3-90.96, Arctic and Extreme Cold Weather Operations."

Scheduled for a mid-2024 release, the manual will focus on tactics and strategies in the Arctic and Subarctic and will delve into the complexities of adapting to the harsh region during military operations.

Based on the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate report on the manual, during operations in the Arctic, the Sun may never rise during the month of December; metals and plastics become brittle and can break; batteries have significantly shorter lifespans, and GPS and satellites can be unreliable due to solar storms.

Moreover, the U.S. Army Regaining Arctic Dominance Strategy briefly addresses, in one paragraph, the impact of solar events on communications. However, Loucks and the PLASMA team are poised and ready to add to the Army lexicon of Arctic space weather research.

"We know that there would be impacts if GPS systems were degraded in the Arctic region," Loucks said. "So, what we're trying to do is actually quantify that. The cadets understand that the Arctic region is likely the next coming area of operations. There's already stuff happening over there—you see it in the news periodically. It's not a question of if but when (solar storms) are going to impact operations."

The Heart of the Research: PLASMA team Aims to Peer into the Storm

To understand space weather—to measure its contents and determine its strategic importance in the Arctic, you must start with a narrow metallic cylinder similar in length to a number two pencil.

The cylinder is fastened at the center to a square wooden base. A centimeter of a single wire, named the probe tip, protrudes through the top of the cylinder like a candle wick and extends downward underneath the wooden base, revealing more circuitry.

This device is called a cylindrical Langmuir probe, and despite its modest appearance, the PLASMA team will use a similar version of this device to identify the temperature of plasma particles in space.

Essentially, the probe is intended to launch in Alaska toward the ionosphere, an area in the Earth's upper atmosphere that augments radio waves used for communication and navigation. Once there, the probe zaps the wire to collect data on the temperature of particles. This allows cadets to discern the plasma characteristics of aurora scintillation in the Arctic and how it affects GNSS.

Before constructing the probe, last summer, team leader, Class of 2025 Cadet Claire Lao Qinglang and other cadets on the PLASMA team conducted a three-week literature review on distinct types of Langmuir probes, and space plasma.

On the fourth week, members of the team traveled to Colorado, where they met and spoke with Dr. Xu Wang, a research scientist from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Dr. Joseph "Sam" Samaniego, a research scientist from Helicity Space.

Wang and Samaniego provided the cadets with the knowledge and tools needed to understand the core elements of a Langmuir probe, with Wang aiding cadets at the lab, constructing the probe, and Sam advising them remotely.

Throughout the research, the team referenced journal articles and textbooks to determine the geometry of their Langmuir probe and design it based on the ionosphere's plasma measurements.

"The reason we have different types of Langmuir probes is because of the measurement environment of the plasma. The measurement environment determines the geometry of your probes," Wang said. "For example, in general, there are three types of geometries: cylindrical is like a long rod; spherical: it's like a ball; or a planar: it's like a disc. So, these three types of geometries can be used for Langmuir probes."

Wang added that the initial cylindrical probe design the PLASMA team built will change based on the specifications of their mission. Moreover, the process is a crucial reminder of the difference between attaching your probe to a Cube Sat (a square-shaped miniature satellite) and attaching a probe to a vacuum chamber in the laboratory.

However, the practice they receive from constructing a probe informs them that the physics behind the laboratory and space probe designs are similar.

"This is the laboratory probe that we built," Qinglang said, holding the wooden base of the device. "It's going to look a little bit different inside the spacecraft, depending on what specifications we finally determine. And so, the probe has been tested in laboratory plasma. It works, it's just not fitted to space plasma."

Samaniego stated that while the design and construction of a Langmuir probe are fairly simple, challenges arise in how the probe adapts to the interstellar environment of space. In a laboratory, plasma measurements can be controlled, but the plasma environment in space can cause issues with space plasma diagnostics if the probe does not meet the requirements needed to acquire accurate readings.

To avoid these issues, Samaniego advised cadets by referencing four circumstances that can impede precise data collection.

The four issues he cited were:

  • When the probe is in the sheath of the spacecraft.
  • Exposure to photo secondary electron emission.
  • When the probe is affected by its own wake.
  • Atomic Oxygen

The Spacecraft's Sheath

The sheath is the spacecraft's durable barrier built to withstand the harsh elements of space. However, if the probe is attached to the exterior and the sheath is too thick or is made of certain materials, it can either block or distort the signals the probe is trying to detect, causing inaccurate readings of the space plasma.

"The potential barrier in the sheath can change the characteristics of charged particles being collected by the probe, causing mischaracterization of the ambient plasma," Samaniego wrote in his dissertation. "As of now, there is no way to correlate probe measurements in the sheath to the ambient plasma, or to get accurate measurements of the sheath itself using a single Langmuir probe."

One method, Wang suggested, was to attach a long arm called a "Boom" to the spacecraft. The Langmuir probe is mounted onto the Boom so that once the spacecraft has absorbed the brunt of the electric charge from probe measurements, the probe itself will not suffer from the residual effects of the charge.

" ... You want the probe to stay outside the environment around the spacecraft while it's being charged," Wang said. "Because the charge around the spacecraft will create something called a "sheath" and the charge from the sheath is different from the space plasma you want to measure."

Photo and Secondary Electron Emissions

Another issue Samaniego addressed to the cadets was getting light shine on the spacecraft, which is tied to photo and secondary electron emissions.

"There's something called the photoelectric effect, and so light will emit electrons from the surface (of the spacecraft)," he added. "Now, this again changes the space plasma environment. Also, if you get bombarded by what's called high-energy electrons, you get secondary emission."

Picture a spacecraft floating in space, its exterior illuminated by the Sun. As sunlight hits its metallic surface, particles called electrons get released. This is called the photoelectric effect.

The process is relatively similar to when sunlight hits a solar panel and generates electricity, but instead of the metal surface generating electricity, it releases electrons.

The electrons that the photoelectric effect releases will sometimes bounce off the walls and surfaces of a spacecraft, releasing more electrons. It's like a domino effect: one electron collides with a surface, causing more electrons to get knocked loose.

The same effect can occur when sunlight hits a Langmuir probe. If the electrons collide with the probe and the spacecraft, it will cause secondary electron emissions that will interfere with probe measurements.

The Wake Effect

When a spacecraft is traveling through the ionosphere, it can create disturbances in the plasma called the "wake effect."

Similar to a speed boat creating ripple effects as it passes through the ocean, the spacecraft can affect the surrounding plasma by pushing away charged particles, thus creating the wake effect. It can also change the plasma's density and temperature.

When that happens, a Langmuir probe is unable to collect accurate readings due to the plasma losing its uniformity. It is like an oceanographer trying to determine the ocean's temperature, but the same speedboat from earlier keeps creating waves, changing the water's behavior around the thermometer.

How the Wake Effect Influences the Debye Length

Referred to as the "Debye length," this term represents the range at which charged particles will interact.

"One analogy for the Debye length is going snorkeling. Sometimes you have very clear visibility, and other times you don't. You see those nice videos of people in the Caribbean and they can see for 10s of meters underwater and then you go jump off the Coast of most of the U.S. and you can barely see anything in the water," Samaniego said. "The common term for that is called optical depth.

"It's kind of a length scale for how much you can see," he added. "The Debye length is similar to that in the sense that the denser the plasma is or the less dense the plasma is, it's going to change how quickly something gets screened."

The charged particles influence each other's behavior before they fade away due to spacecraft interference. Similar to standing in a dark room with a dim light source, the farther away you get from the light source, the less you will see, and vice versa. The particles are like the dim light sources in the darkness that can see each other as they maintain a certain distance from one another. However, a spacecraft, if large enough, can cause the particles to spread out as it passes through, causing a disturbance in that wake region.

Studying these potential outcomes thoroughly will guide the cadets during their design process, however, one important key factor they must consider is the length and diameter of the space probe relative to the Debye length, which goes back to Wang's earlier statement about the size of the Langmuir probe.

"In the ionosphere, there is very cold plasma, the temperature is really low, and the density is not that small. So, the Debye length, if I remember correctly is like millimeters. It's really small," Wang said. "If your Debye length is really short, you choose a cylindric probe."

Atomic Oxygen 

An additional concern that Samaniego mentioned was how the spacecraft would fare in the ionosphere with the pervasive presence of atomic oxygen.

"Oxygen is very corrosive causing everything to rust," Samaniego said. "And so, what happens is you get an oxide layer on the surface of your probe and that changes your measurements over time."

For example, if the cadets were conducting a long-term mission collecting significant amounts of data in the ionosphere, they would notice, as the probe surface begins to erode, that they are receiving incorrect measurements of plasma.

To prevent that outcome, Wang, Samaniego, and the PLASMA team went through an assortment of different coatings that would not oxidize the Langmuir probe.

These four issues are among the multitude of tasks and responsibilities the PLASMA team needs to account for as they problem-solve their way to an eventual launch of their Langmuir probe. This experience also allows cadets to understand the critical importance of researching and determining where potential setbacks may arise.

"It's about understanding and then building something that would be robust enough to the point where it wouldn't matter if you were in these situations or not, you would still be able to get true and accurate data," Samaniego said.

Investigating Possibilities, Redirecting Goals

As Qinglang and other team members received thorough instruction on probes, Class of 2026 Cadet Larry Bolt departed on his flight to Fairbanks, Alaska.

His mission was clear: to investigate and determine the feasibility of launching the probe into space on a sounding rocket.

It was summertime when Bolt arrived at 3:00 a.m. and stepped off the plane to be greeted by Alaska's notoriously surreal daytime hours.

After getting settled, Bolt drove to the Poker Flat Research Range and met with his contact, Dr. Robert McCoy, the director of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

He was also greeted by Kathy Rich, the Range Coordinator, who briefed him on Hypersonic rockets before visiting the launchpad where the PLASMA team would potentially launch their sounding rocket to the ionosphere with their Langmuir probe attached as a payload.

Later that day, a meeting was held in which Bolt inquired about what the team needed to successfully launch their rocket.

"The biggest problem was telemetry at the time," Bolt said. "Meaning, getting our rocket and the payload hooked up to send the data, via radio waves, down to launch control to collect the data we need."

The total cost to achieve this with a ground support crew was a hefty $2,000,000. Bolt sought an alternative.

"(Kathy) mentioned a company called Aurora Launch Services (ALS), which is another contact I used," Bolt said.

The company specializes in "providing low cost, highly reliable launch services to both government and space launch customers worldwide."

After contacting ALS, Bolt received a call three weeks later and arranged a meeting.

"They couldn't give us a price because we just didn't have enough information about our rocket … ," Bolt said. "At the time, we just had our model probe. Because of that, we had to readjust our initiative.

Bolt met with his team and Maj. Nicholas Deschenes, assistant professor of space physics and principal advisor of the PLASMA team.

Bolt sat before the chalkboard alongside his peers, thinking of ways to rebound from not having the means to launch a rocket.

Then, like a spark igniting the fire, Bolt proposed an idea: to shift the initiative entirely from using sounding rockets to becoming a CubeSat project.

" ... We were in a meeting and he's like, 'What if we (build a CubeSat)?,'" Deschenes said. "We started drawing up things on a chalkboard and talking about it and I told him, 'Larry, this might be a game changer, dude.'"

Additionally, one of Bolt's most significant breakthroughs while visiting Alaska was getting in contact with NASA. Kathy gave Bolt a name: Christian Walston, a Technical Manager at the Advanced Projects Office at NASA Wallops. Walston's services range from getting probes on sounding rockets that are already built and ready for launch to testing the durability of the probe and gauging whether it is spaceflight ready.

"There is a whole range of things we will need to collect to conduct our project, and Walston already does that for NASA. He provides that service, and there is a cost attributed to it. But we're not sure what that cost is," Bolt said. "Hopefully, we get enough funding to cover whatever the cost is. So far, we've been working with him for months and right now, he's our pathway."

Another essential aspect of fulfilling the mission goal is navigating the business behind the innovation. While the scientific elements of the projects present its own challenges, securing funds and rallying support can be just as laborious. With the team hoping to secure a launch date around October of this year, tight deadlines are routinely met with securing funds to purchase the parts needed to either build or modify equipment.

"The biggest hurdle that we're trying to jump right now is getting parts," Deschenes said. "The government funding process is a difficult task. Securing the funds and then ordering the parts with that funding is not trivial."

Coordinating business deals, writing grant proposals and presenting the research at conferences are among the many obligations that keep the cadets engrossed in their perspective tasks.

"Larry and Claire are both heading to the Space Weather Workshop in Colorado next month to present this research and hopefully get some buy-in," Deschenes said.

Deschenes added that Qinglang and Bolt work effectively together as team leads and have created a viable workflow system that boosts efficiency. This experience teaches cadets the importance of delegating and trusting colleagues to fulfill certain tasks. It also allows them to study and build on their strengths, while refining latent abilities.

"They complement each other. They help each other out and now they're both managing," Deschenes said. "They've delegated and tasked junior cadets to be in charge of portions of the project ... it's like a positive feedback loop that is just perpetual."

As the PLASMA team remains industrious, driven, and focused, Deschenes admits that he continues to be inspired by how diligent and steadfast all 13 cadets have been and is proud to be a witness to their consummate growth.

" ... I want them to be go-getters. I want them to go out and get stuff done. I want them to identify problems and solve them before I am even aware of them. I want them to fix things," Deschenes concluded. "That's what a leader should do and that's what I try to encourage them to do. They are briefing astronauts, doing physics with NASA, and traveling all over the place, talking to people and realizing like, 'hey, we're doing something cool. We're doing something that hasn't been done before."