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Press Release

NOAA Selects Johns Hopkins APL’s George Ho for Space Weather Advisory Group

, a space and planetary physicist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, has been selected to serve on the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Advisory Group (SWAG), the agency announced Sept. 14. The panel will counsel the federal government on topics related to space weather and help develop a plan to mitigate its effects on humanity and the nation’s space assets.

Space weather is a scientific field focused on understanding and predicting fluctuations in the radiation and magnetic environment around Earth and their adverse effects on humanity. These fluctuations are caused by the Sun’s hypersonic stream of charged particles, called the solar wind, and its somewhat haphazard bursts of energy, which can disrupt satellite communications, knock out ground-based power grids and produce radiation levels lethal to astronauts in space.