World's first space met office goes live

The world's first proper space weather service is now going live, according to the boffins setting it up. Forecasts and warnings of fearful radiation storms, ion deluges etc are expected to be invaluable to those operating in the fields of communications and satellites – and life-critical for future astronauts travelling beyond …

[Anonymous Coward]

So will I be able to

Plan my trip to see the northern lights based on this? I believe the next good year for it should be about 2013

[Anonymous Coward]

Awaiting the naysayers...

...like Telegraph columnists (the Teletards) screeching about how all this technology is nonsense and that "everything was better before when the weatherman put his finger into outer space and told us whether it would be fine tomorrow".

[amanfromMars 1]

Perfect 10 Space Storm Warning ....... Colossal Rein Reign Rain Forecast

Forewarned is Forearmed, El Reg. After all, you are a Remote Proxy Part of the AI Team :-) .... Fellow Bit Space Travelers on AIMissions. ........ http://amanfrommars.blogspot.com/2011/01/110128-friday-again-already-where-does.html

21st Century Networking par Excellence? ........ in one of those Ologies ..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEfKEzX9QLE

[Anonymous Coward]

Best caption ever?

"The space met boys say Mars orbit is being hit by an absolute elephant's arsehole at the moment, skipper"

[John Smith 19]

Interesting how these events will correlate with AGW

Given the view of the Indian scientist that galactic gamma rays have a part to play in cloud formation.

Obviously in that case it would be the one that get through the magnetosphere that matter.

My guess is that the first major event whose damage is mitigated by this level of early warning will pay for the whole project for years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh Gawd!!

Something else for the Daily Fail to scare the bejesus out of gullible people.

Is that part of the prevention is better than cure? In which case if we get a huuuge gamma or whatever wave getting through is it better to know in advance or just get zapped without warning.

I know which I would prefer.

[mhenriday]

I really appreciated that press release available on the CISM web site :

«First Large-Scale, Physics-Based Space Weather Model Transitions Into Operation». Presumably «physics-based» as opposed to the faith-based space weather model they were running earlier....

Henri

[David Casler]

Nope--not the "world's first" Space Met

With all due respect, you ought to investigate press releases before just copying them. Space weather prediction has been done for years and years out of the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. It's a joint venture between NOAA (the US weather folks) and the US Air Force. You can get to their website easily by searching on the name of the organization.

[Martin Budden]

Mr

"satellites and other orbital hardware"

Erm, what kind of orbital hardware isn't a satellite? ALL objects in orbit, including bits of debris, satchels etc are satellites.