The European Space Agency (ESA) recently conducted its most extreme space weather simulation yet, a catastrophic solar storm modeled on the 1859 Carrington Event, the most powerful geomagnetic storm ever recorded. The exercise, staged at ESA's mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany, was designed to test how satellites and operations teams for the upcoming Sentinel-1D mission would respond to a superstorm that, according to ESA scientists, "would leave no spacecraft safe."
The Catastrophic Scenario
The simulation, titled "Flying through the biggest solar storm ever recorded," presented a triple-threat scenario:
X45-Class Solar Flare: The event began with a massive X45-class solar flare—one of the most intense levels—unleashing an electromagnetic wave that reached Earth in just eight minutes. This caused an immediate loss of GPS/Galileo navigation functionalities and severely disrupted radar systems and communications. Ground stations, especially in polar regions, lost tracking capabilities due to peak radiation levels.
High-Energy Particle Barrage: This was followed minutes later by a wave of high-energy protons, electrons, and alpha particles. These particles slammed into orbiting spacecraft, accelerating to near-light speeds, causing false readings, data corruption, and the risk of permanent hardware damage to onboard electronics.
Coronal Mass Ejection (CME): The main event, a massive cloud of hot, charged plasma (the CME), struck Earth's magnetic field approximately 15 hours later. This impact caused the Earth's upper atmosphere to swell dramatically, increasing drag on satellites by up to 400%. This massive increase in drag knocks satellites from their predicted orbits, heightens the risk of collisions with space debris, and shortens the spacecraft's longevity.
Key Takeaways and Preparations
The mission controllers were forced to make real-time, high-stakes decisions with disrupted navigation and communication. The primary goal became "to keep the satellite safe and limit the damage as much as possible," as there are "no good solutions" for an event of this magnitude.
The key conclusion from the exercise is that an event like the Carrington Event is inevitable. As one of the lead simulation officers stated, "it's not a question of if this will happen but when."
To prepare for the future, ESA is expanding its monitoring network and is preparing for the 2031 Vigil mission, a new spacecraft that will sit at the Sun-Earth L5 point to provide earlier warnings of incoming solar eruptions, offering more time for ground teams to secure critical infrastructure and put spacecraft into a safe mode.
On the ground, a Carrington-level storm could overload power grids, surge currents through pipelines, and cause a global technological collapse, affecting everything from banking to communication networks.