Question: how will your work affect the future

Mike Salter answered on 14 Mar 2012:

Big question! Much of the work we do is building electronics for cameras on satellites that look at the Sun. One thing these cameras do is look for something called Coronal Mass Ejections (or CMEs for short). These are waves of energetic particles that are thrown out by the sun. If these Coronal Mass Ejections are directed towards earth then they can cause all sorts of trouble, such as breaking satellites or interfering with radio communications on earth. They can even cause the electricity grid to fail, leaving large areas of earth without power!

You may have heard about these on the news recently as there was a large CME last week. It’s believed the sun is going into a period of high activity so there could be lots more over the coming next few years.

As we become more and more dependent on technology we have to be very careful that these events don’t cause too much damage or put people in danger on earth. A big part of that will be predicting when earth is going to be hit by a Coronal Mass Ejection, and my work helps us do that!