Warning: Building the space station could be hazardous to your health. That's the message from a National Research Council panel, which last week urged NASA to find a way to warn spacewalking construction crews of impending solar storms. Flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun can unleash massive streams of charged particles, which could pack enough energy to harm astronauts working outside the relative protection of the space shuttle or station modules. The risk of injury is rising, as the sun will reach the peak of activity in its 11-year cycle in 2001.
Researchers, however, do not yet have a good grasp on predicting solar storms. So the panel, chaired by Boston University physicist George Siscoe, urged NASA and other agencies to use satellites, such as the existing Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and spacecraft slated to begin monitoring the sun next year, to anchor an early warning system that would tell astronauts when to stay indoors. NASA solar research chief George Withbroe, who requested the report, says he is confident the new space-based sentinels--which will provide more detailed data than SOHO alone--will soon give Earth-bound researchers a better grip on predicting solar events.
