The South African National Space Agency continues to monitor the effects of space weather across the continent. Its work is perhaps underappreciated but it is now searching for growth and looking to help integrate space-knowledge with government decision making, for the benefit of SA society.
You might not know it, but your business has and will potentially be affected by space weather. Space weather is a scientific field that has been studied for many years, but its nature and effects are still not fully understood. It is defined by Natural Resources Canada as: “A collection of physical processes, beginning at the Sun and ultimately affecting human activities on Earth and in space. The Sun emits energy, as flares of electromagnetic radiation (radio waves, infra-red, light, ultraviolet, X-rays), and as energetic electrically charged particles through coronal mass ejections (CME) and plasma streams. The particles travel outwards as the solar wind, carrying parts of the Sun’s magnetic field with them.”
In South Africa, monitoring of space weather and utilising information to predict and prepare for its effects is a task that falls to SANSA – the South African National Space Agency. The modern-South Africa is now well-known for its capabilities in science and technology and this has helped SANSA to grow and develop internationally recognised know-how; know-how that space agencies from all over the world want to share.
SANSA recently hosted representatives from the Met Office, Mullard Space Science Laboratory, RAL Space, and Imperial College London in the UK. The visitors met with SANSA researchers to discuss a multinational space weather project as part of the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Space Programme (IPSP).
Critical national and international infrastructures, such as power grids, transport, communications and financial services specifically, are at risk from the adverse impact of space weather. Governments in several countries, including the UK, are now factoring these risks, along with those caused by natural hazards, into risk management programmes.
“SANSA will contribute knowledge on the impacts of space weather on crucial infrastructure such as power grids and the country’s diverse range of technological availability and high dependence on mobile technology, as well as its ground-based space-weather monitoring infrastructure that could enhance services provided by other nations,” said Dr Lee-Anne McKinnell, SANSA MD.
The IPSP, which will help to determine the socio-economic impact of the consequences of space weather and also build capacity in developing counties to contribute to the international space weather ‘problem’, is well received in South Africa and SANSA’s Corporate Communications Manager, Vaneshree Maharaj explains more about what the state-owned company is offering.
“If you look at space weather technology currently; the prediction of solar flares has improved,” she says. “We used to be able to predict where they would impact the earth anywhere between four hours and four days in advance; now it’s more like at least five days. You can take power grids off or put in damage control and that is what technology is helping us do. It’s even being integrated into policy for our Navy and Air Force and communication systems as all of this can be impacted by solar weather.
“Globally, the technology is moving so rapidly that we could eventually predict where solar weather events are going to occur and possibly the extent of the damage. We could then put out early warning or try and mitigate.”
And the technology being developed by SANSA and its partners, and the applications that are now available are not just helpful with space exploration and space weather monitoring, they’re also extremely useful in ‘earth observation’, weather prediction and other observational tasks. Following the droughts which have plagued the country since the third quarter of 2015, the SA government tasked SANSA with developing an application that could assist in the overall care of the situation as well as provide ad-hoc information to other government departments.
“The drought monitoring system came out of a need from government,” explains Maharaj. “They needed tools and information because the drought impacted our entire population. Apart from just giving the government the data, we’ve created tools and applications and provided training for their staff on how to utilise the tools so it’s all addressing a critical need. We also provide a national mosaic of the country which is given freely to all government departments and they use that for various things including infrastructure development, looking at the growth of informal settlements, where proper housing is needed, looking at our power lines and this helps the housing department and also Stats SA. Space is becoming integrated in the government’s toolkit for making decisions and starting projects but we could be doing so much more,” she says.
Of course, just like any scientific organisation, funding remains an issue for SANSA and the business will look for ways to boost its funding in the future but right now it continues to work closely with international partners, both in Africa and further afield, to leverage existing assets.
“We download data from a few satellites from the French CNES, where we have six or seven, we download from NASA’s Landsat 8, and we also have agreements the Chinese where we can access the data but not download,” Maharaj explains. “We download at our space operations facility at Hartebeesthoek and that is for the purposes of our earth observation division. They process, analyse and create applications from that data for our stakeholders who are government departments, SOCs and private customers who all use SANSA data for a wide range of activities.
“We are currently part of the ARMC (African Resource Management Constellation) agreement which includes SA, Nigeria, Algeria, Kenya, and possibly Egypt in the future, and we all contribute observation satellites. We often buy data, which is very expensive, so in the Constellation we can have a greater revisit time over the continent and we can share this information with people on the continent.
“We also partner with Ghana where we have a radio antenna, we do a lot of training of governmental employees across Africa concerning water management through the TIGER project, we’re developing capacity on the continent and we also have a regional space weather centre which is monitoring the sun and in the event that Africa would experience any adverse solar activity, they would be able to contact the continent,” she says.
All of this work is vital, not only for the SA government and various other stakeholders, but also for businesses on a much wider scale. Unusual weather, extreme conditions, solar flaring etc can all have an impact on the day-to-day and people need to be aware of this. This is why the SANSA and the government are trying to integrate the work of the agency with overall government policy and decision making – empowering people through technology.
“The major area of focus right now is our earth observation program because it plays a critical role in the governments National Development Plan and because we’re government funded, our priority and our biggest stakeholder is society in South Africa,” explains Maharaj. “Using our data, we’ve produced a number of applications like the drought monitoring system because we’re experiencing that extensively now. Food security is also a concern along with accessing water so our system is available to the government and its departments for the greater good of the country. We also do a lot in terms of disasters; we go through these seasons of fire, flooding and drought so our systems track that. We are making progress in terms of our satellite to contribute to ARMC but that’s a big impact project as it’s not just an ordinary satellite; its developing capacity and developing the space industry.
“We want to invest in infrastructure and train people so that more businesses can supply the space industry, not only locally but also in Africa. Funding is the only delay in this as it’s very expensive but it’s a big drive and it forms part of the National Space Program,” she says.
We will hear more next month about the plans that SANSA has for boosting its funding and the work that goes into training people. As the agency targets growth, perhaps now is the time to think about how a major space weather event could affect your business – are you prepared? Are you even aware of what could happen and why? SANSA can answer these questions; this is one of the SOCs that is run purely to serve SA society; now would be a great time to show support.