President Obama issued an executive order Thursday outlining how the federal government will prepare for and respond to “space-weather events,” such as solar flares that can wreak global havoc.
These events “occur regularly, some with measurable effects on critical infrastructure systems and technologies, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), satellite operations and communication, aviation and the electrical power grid,” the order said. “Extreme space-weather events … could disable large portions of the electrical power grid, resulting in cascading failures that would affect key services such as water supply, health care and transportation … and safety across entire continents.”
“Successfully preparing for space weather events is an all-of-nation endeavor that requires partnerships across governments, emergency managers, academia, the media, the insurance industry, nonprofits and the private sector,” Obama said in the order.
The federal government has to be able to predict and detect such events as well as respond to and recover from their effects, Obama said.
The order delineated specific tasks to different agencies and departments. For example, the Pentagon has to “ensure the timely provision of operational space-weather observations, analyses [and] forecasts,” and warn of “phenomena that may affect weapons systems, military operations or the defense of the United States.”
The Interior Department has to study “variations of the Earth’s magnetic field associated with solar-terrestrial interactions” and the Energy Department has to protect and restore the electrical power grid “during a presidentially declared grid- security emergency associated with a geomagnetic disturbance.”
The order included deadlines for various benchmarks, such as making historical GPS and other government-run satellite data publicly available within 120 days.
