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Military Testing Will Affect California GPS

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Edwards Air Force Base

An aerial view of Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The Federal Aviation Administration warns pilots that in June global positioning signals will be affected by military testing.

The duration of the testing will be of six days, and it will affect Southern California.

However, the official announced that commercial airlines will not be influenced by the signal’s anomalies. Pilots could also avoid the affected areas, if necessary.

The Military Testing Purpose

The testing is organized by the Naval Air Warfare Center from California. The event is part of a routine research, and it will involve the development, trial and evaluation of new technologies. China Lake tests weapons and avionics which will be used for tactical aircraft.

Official representatives said that this type of military testing is not unusual and throughout the years, there had been a continuous collaboration with the civil aviation administration in order to secure the commercial flights activity during these types of events.

Neither FDA, nor the Navy revealed the true purpose of the testing, the only indication being that the process will serve to test GPS interference.

Details on the Impact

The signal will be disturbed at least 50 feet off the ground and 40,000 feet above the sea level for approximately 550 miles. The base of the affected area lies between Nevada and California, going as far as 40,000 feet high.

The announcement said that the GPS interference could have an impact on a type of executive jet, Embraer Phenom 300, and recommends that pilots avoid the area and monitor their flight control systems for any loss of positioning signal.

This type of private jet can carry up to six people, and it can reach the speed of 520 mph. Overall,  330 Embraer Phenom planes are flying around the world.

Highlighting a particular type of aircraft is unusual for general announcements like this. One of the explanations may be that Embraer planes have become more popular.

The tests could completely disable a number of navigation devices, including WAAS, ADS-B, and GBAS.

However, the commercial airlines have enough capacity to mitigate system disturbances and will not be affected by the testings.

Because of the fact that the experiments will influence the signals at 50 feet up the ground, the GPS for cars, phones or other devices will not be affected.

The testing will take place from 9.30 am until 3.30 pm Pacific time, between the 7th and 30th of June. Pilots will receive additional alerts a day before the testings. Also, the officials say that the tests could be cancelled or reduced, without prior notice.

Image Source: Wikipedia

NASA’s Telescope Captured Gigantic Solar Flare Blasted From Sun’s Surface

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Massive-solar-flares

A gigantic solar flare blasted from the surface of the sun late Friday after days of powerful storms from the sun.

Named as an X1.8 event — one of the most intense possible — the enormous solar flare brought about a power outage on parts of the Earth when it topped Friday evening at 7:28 p.m. EST. It was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

It originated from an area of the sun that is named Active Region 2242. Further sun storms could happen in that area, as indicated by a Space.com report.

Specialists say that the region is vast and complex, and more radio power outages could about to happen. The flare was a part of an active week of sun storms. One more active sunspot area had made two moderate-sized flares a week ago before the latest flare.

X-class lunar flares are tremendously powerful events that, when pointed at Earth, can upset communications and GPS frameworks on Earth, and even debilitate satellites and space travelers outside the atmosphere.

M-class flares are around a 10th 0f the size of X-class flares, however they can make stunning displays of the Northern Lights. With more M-class flares expected this weekend, individuals in a few areas may get a dynamite Christmas light show from geomagnetic storms activated by the flares.

The majority of the radio blackout that happened from Friday’s X1.8 lunar flare was in Australia and the South Pacific.

The sun is on an 11-year space weather cycle that has its peaks. We are at present in the crest period of Solar Cycle 24.

Sunspots are momentary phenomena on the sun that seem darker than encompassing areas, which needs to do with amassing of the magnetic field that result in a lower surface temperature. They frequently show up in sets, with one sunspot having the inverse magnetic polarity as the other. They are ordinarily liable of lunar flares because of their extremely magnetically active areas.

A lunar flare is an expansive energy release that can be equal to 160,000,000,000 megatons of TNT. In contrast, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were identical to only three megatons.

Electrons, ions, and molecules are catapulted by means of the flare from the corona of the sun into the breadths of space, ordinarily arriving at the Earth a day or two later.

Lunar/solar flares were initially seen in 1859.

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