NASA's Solar Shield to Protect Power Grids From Sun Storms

NASA has devised a new tool in the battle against massive eruptions from the sun: an early warning system to protect electrical grids on Earth from extremely powerful solar storms.

The new project, called Solar Shield, is designed to predict the severity of powerful sun storms at specific locations on Earth to help power companies plan responses and limit the potential damage to their equipment.

“It amounts to knowing ‘something is coming and it may be big,'” said project leader Antti Pulkkinen, a research associate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told SPACE.com. But Solar Shield should provide “much more specificity.”

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