[PPRAANet] Solar update

[wv7t at aol.com]

COSMIC RAY UPDATE--NEW RESULTS FROM THE MOON: Note to astronauts: 2019 is not a good year to fly into deep space.In fact, it's shaping up to be one of the worst of the Space Age. One of the deepest Solar Minima of the pastcentury is underway now. As the sun's magnetic field weakens, cosmic rays from deep space are flooding intothe solar system, posing potential health risks to space travelers.NASA is monitoring the situation with aradiation sensor in lunar orbit. The Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) has beencircling the Moon on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft since 2009. Researchers have justpublished a paper in the journal Space Weatherdescribing CRaTER's latest findings."The overall decreasein solar activity in this period has led to an increased flux of energetic particles, to levels thatare approaching those observed during the previous solar minimum in 2009/2010, which was the deepestminimum of the Space Age," write the authors, led by Cary Zeitlin of NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center."The data have implications for humanexploration of deep space." This always happens during Solar Minimum.As solar activity goes down, cosmic rays go up. The last two Solar Minima have been unusually deep,leading to high cosmic ray fluxes in 2008-2010 and again in 2018-2019. These are the worst years sincehumans first left Earth in the 1960s.The latest data from CRaTER show cosmic ray fluxes almost doublingsince 2015: