Solar sail probe could enable 40% faster 'space tornado' warnings

A team of scientists from the University of Michigan has proposed a new early warning system to detect "space tornadoes," which are spirals of solar wind plasma and magnetic fields known as flux ropes. These space weather phenomena form during coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the sun and can trigger geomagnetic storms that disrupt satellite orbits, affect astronauts, and potentially cause severe technological outages on Earth. Their simulations showed that flux ropes, ranging from thousands to millions of miles wide, form when fast and slow solar wind streams collide, sometimes persisting long enough to pose significant risks. To improve detection, the researchers suggest deploying a constellation of spacecraft based on the Space Weather Investigation Frontier (SWIFT) concept, consisting of four probes arranged in a triangular-pyramid formation about 200,000 miles apart at the Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1 (L1). One of these probes would use a solar sail similar to NASA’s proposed Solar Cruiser mission, harnessing sunlight for propulsion. Station