Final Eclipse

Chapter 1: Lagrange Point One

“I’m telling you, they’re dead! They’re all dead!”

Kevin stopped in the hallway. Usually he didn’t care to listen in on his father’s remote conferences with other scientists, but now he froze at the entrance of the upstairs study and leaned back to glance through the half-open doorway. Kevin saw his father scoot forward in his black leather armchair to power up a laptop on the oversized oak desk. Light from the late afternoon sun filtered through the wooden blinds to create a striped pattern across the stacks of papers surrounding the slim computer. A large speakerphone sat precariously on a corner of the desk, blinking red to indicate an ongoing conversation.

Despite the panicked message that had just come through, the bearded face of Kevin’s father was devoid of expression. “What do you mean, ‘they’re all dead’?”

“Everything’s dead! That’s what I mean!” the high-pitched voice shot out from the black speaker.

Kevin set his backpack down in the hallway and edged closer to the doorway. His precalculus homework could wait.

“Okay, Miguel. What exactly went down? What does the spacecraft ephemeris file look like?”

Kevin found it peculiar, and sometimes annoying, how his father could always remain composed and calm as if everything was just another technical problem to be solved. But this time, he noticed bushy eyebrows wrinkle in concern as the panicked voice on the speakerphone quickened.

“No! Not the instruments,” it shouted. “I mean, well, they’re probably dead too. No way to tell really. You don’t get it, Dave. We’ve completely lost contact with SolarX.”

“The entire spacecraft? Are you sure that—”

Miguel’s voice continued rising in pitch and volume. “Yes, the entire spacecraft! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. And not just ours. It looks like none of the others are alive either.”

“The others?” The corners of his father’s mouth turned downward. “Miguel, are you talking about SOHO and ACE?”

“SolarX, Discover, ACE, WIND, SOHO…” The agitated voice shot out acronyms in a steady rhythm. “From what I can tell, the DSN can’t find any of them. Everything at L1 is gone! This has got to be something big, right?”

Though he didn’t completely understand the technical jargon, Kevin was used to hearing it. By now, he knew that nearly every word used by NASA scientists stood for something. The combination of scientific terms with all the acronyms meant that they essentially spoke another language, a special code that made their work sound important, but completely unintelligible to most people. Over the years, some of the NASA lingo had rubbed off onto Kevin which gave him a slight advantage in deciphering the conversation.

He knew a little about his father’s most recent project—SolarX, the Strategic Observatory for Line-Absorption Resonance eXperiments. He even had a vague idea of what those words meant. Kevin guessed that the other names Miguel had listed were acronyms for additional unmanned NASA satellites that, like SolarX, took pictures of the sun and monitored all sorts of particles and electromagnetic fields in outer space. He had no idea what the “DSN” was, but “L1” did sound familiar—some special orbit, presumably where all the affected satellites hung out. If NASA couldn’t reestablish communications with them, that would be a few billion dollars’ worth of hardware up in smoke. No wonder Miguel was freaking out.

Kevin’s father plucked at his beard. “Sounds like a problem with the ground network. If we can’t hear anything, there must be something wrong with our reception—the antennas, or the ground connections, or maybe even the—”

“No, no, no,” Miguel cut in, clearly losing patience with his supervisor’s calm disposition. “Dave, you don’t understand. All other spacecraft are tracking and reporting just fine. Everything’s working normally. We just aren’t hearing anything from our satellites at L1. This has to be a space weather event!”

Kevin’s father sat upright in his chair and his inward gaze intensified as he tapped the desk rapidly with his fingertips, a habit Kevin had observed many times before. The eminent Dr. David Mycroft was now unreachable by any distraction. And so Kevin was quite surprised when, a moment later, his presence at the doorway was noticed, and even more shocked to see his father’s arm beckoning to him. He cautiously slid into the room to position himself next to the pendulum clock opposite his father’s desk.

Great. Now I’m stuck here.

He began absently picking at his fingernails. Despite his peaked curiosity, he didn’t want to risk interrupting the conversation with dumb questions. As the rhythmic tapping at the desk continued, Kevin pulled out his phone and searched for a webpage that would explain the meaning of some of the acronyms he had just heard.

Lagrange Point One, sometimes abbreviated L1, is the first of several so-called “Lagrange points,” special orbital positions where—

There was a loud grunt, and Kevin looked up to see his father glaring at him. He probably assumed it was a video game. Kevin frowned and pocketed the phone.

“Dave? Are you still there?”

Dr. Mycroft turned his attention back to the desk and attacked his laptop, fingers rapidly typing and clicking. “Okay. Exactly when did they go down?”

“Only about five minutes ago.”

“Exactly when?”

There was a brief pause. “Um… SolarX went down at 10:43 UTC. We lost contact with the rest at different times, but it looks like all within… hang on… within about three minutes of each other.”

Mycroft stared at his screen. “Hmm. I’m not seeing any response in the earth’s field yet. Ground-based magnetometer stations are all reading nominal. Nothing has reached the earth’s magnetosphere. This is very curious.”

Kevin looked around awkwardly, trying to figure out why his father wanted him in the room. He felt a little annoyed at the sense that he was still eavesdropping, invisible and irrelevant to the discussion in front of him. His father, as usual, was completely engrossed in his work. Pretty soon they would be talking about plasma and magnetic reconnection and flux tubes. But despite his father’s insistence that space weather was a big deal, it never seemed important enough for Kevin to bother learning more than the basics. And not nearly as important as what he was planning with Joseph later that afternoon.

Of course, they liked to call it “space weather” because of the parallels to weather on Earth. Most people thought that outer space was just an empty vacuum with nothing in it. Turns out that wasn’t quite true. Evidently, the solar system was full of invisible charged particles and magnetic fields that were always moving around and needed constant monitoring. Then there were “solar winds,” “magnetic clouds,” “space storms,” and other things that scientists would go on and on about. Most of it sounded pretty cool, and sometimes even scary, until you realized it didn’t affect much on Earth.

Satellites were a multibillion-dollar industry, though, and space storms could have a big effect on them. Anyone with hardware in orbit would want to know what the space forecast was for the day, just like anyone in Kansas would want to know if a tornado was coming. Every year, more companies were sending expensive equipment into space—that meant more people who wanted to know what space weather to expect. For now, the most important players were still NASA and the military. And they were the ones who kept Kevin’s father reliably employed.

“So we didn’t lose them all at once?”

“No,” Miguel responded. “That’s one of the ways I know it wasn’t a reception issue at our end. I also checked—”

“Which spacecraft went down last?”

“Looks like SOHO lasted the longest. Do you want me to—”

“Never mind, never mind. Actually, just pull up the last chunk of particle and field data from whatever instruments you can—doesn’t matter which spacecraft. Send it over to me as soon as you access it.”

“Okay, Dave.” Now that he was given specific tasks, the panic in Miguel’s voice started to fade. “I already have some SolarX data up right here on the main server. You should be getting a screenshot now.”

“Got it.” He scowled at the screen. “Uh, Miguel, there’s nothing unusual here.”

“I know, I know. Maybe it was hit too quickly to send us anything. But Dave, what will this do when it reaches Earth?”

“Who knows about this?” He avoided Miguel’s question.

“It’s you and me. We’re short-staffed in the control room—Susan’s out sick. I tried calling Rodenthal, like a hundred times, and I just get voicemail. He’s one of those guys who doesn’t even text, and this time of year he only checks his email once or twice a week.”

The voice on the speakerphone hesitated. When Dr. Mycroft stayed silent, Miguel eventually resumed. “Somebody should let Defense know, right? I mean, if a huge storm’s coming, they should be shutting satellites down, like right away, shouldn’t they?” Fear was returning to his voice.

“Miguel, let’s not panic. We just need to work the problem.” The scientist returned to a calm, assured tone. “What do we know? Obviously, if it was a radiation burst from a giant solar flare, it would have hit Earth’s orbit by now, so there’s nothing we can do about any x-ray damage. But…” He paused. “It should have been picked up by some of the GOES satellite instruments.” He continued typing and clicking at a furious pace, then suddenly stopped and stared intently at the screen of his laptop. His expression was a mixture of concentration and puzzlement in response to whatever he was seeing.

Kevin couldn’t help himself. “What is it, Dad?”

His father’s hand shot up as if to block out Kevin’s question before it could reach him. Even Miguel remained quiet, sensing that the scientist needed to be free from distraction while he processed the data in front of him. The rhythmic ticking of the pendulum behind Kevin marked off the seconds as he waited for his father to explain what he was seeing.

Finally, he spoke. “I’m looking right now at the last hour of x-ray data from GOES-16.” There was another pause. “Huh. There’s absolutely nothing here. Everything looks quiet—just like you’d expect during solar minimum. This doesn’t make sense at all!” The scientist took a deep breath and leaned back in the large office chair.

“But it could be a magnetic cloud, right? Miguel suggested. “That could bring a pretty big EMP with it.”

“Well, it’s not adding up, but if something did kill our spacecraft, a magnetic cloud from a strangely covert CME is as good a guess as any. In that case we don’t have much time. For plasma traveling at typical solar wind speeds, we’d have another hour at the most before it hits Earth.”

EMP? CME? Kevin really wished he had paid closer attention to his father’s evening ramblings about his work. This was starting to sound interesting, and very serious, even more serious than losing some satellites, but he had no idea what it all meant. He could at least tell from the conversation that this was more than just a run-of-the-mill space weather event. He thought back to Miguel’s question. What might it do if it hit the earth?

“Dad, is this going to…”

This time he cut himself off as he saw his father’s eyes zoom in on the computer screen while his long fingers began tapping the desk rhythmically.

“This has to be a reception issue,” Mycroft mumbled to himself. He leaned towards the phone. “Miguel, now I’m looking at those STEREO images you just sent me and they don’t show anything on the sun either. Are you sure we didn’t have an antenna fall over?”

“I told you. We’re hearing everything outside of L1 perfectly. The DSN is fine.”

“All right. I’m heading out to the University to see what Rachel Finto can make of this and we’ll try to sort out what happened. I’ll call you back in about ten minutes when I get to my office. Meanwhile, you call Poltier, Niesen, and Olekson right away. They’re aware of the protocols for CME threats. Tell them what you’ve told me, but let them know that nothing’s certain yet. They can contact the DOD if they want, though I expect automatic alarms have already been tripped. Oh, and get in touch with some of the other mission teams. We can’t be the only ones who know about this, and they might have ideas.”

“Got it.”

“One last thing—have you talked to the folks at ESTRACK yet?”

“Like I said, you’re the first person I’ve been able to reach,” Miguel replied.

“Well, call them too. They can definitively rule out an issue with the DSN. Talk to you in a minute.” He simultaneously closed his laptop and hung up the black desk phone. Then, as if a spell was broken, he looked up at his son with a grim smile.

“Do you want to come to the University with me?”

Kevin was so surprised at the invitation, it took him a moment to respond. “What’s going on, Dad?”

“I don’t know.” His father stood up and pushed his desk chair to the side. “That’s what I have to find out.”

“Is it serious?”

“It could be. It’s probably nothing.” He placed his laptop in an oversized briefcase, crammed in a few other papers from his desk, and headed for the door.

“Nothing?” Kevin asked. “It sounds pretty bad to me!”

“It’s probably just the DSN.”

“What is the ‘DSN’ anyway?”

Kevin’s father stopped in the doorway and frowned. “Don’t you remember? I’ve talked to you about it before. The Deep Space Network? It’s a network of large antennas that we use to communicate with our most distant spacecraft. Europe has a similar network called ESTRACK. I suppose you at least gathered that we lost contact with SolarX.” He headed down the stairs towards the front door, muttering to himself. “Something’s got to be blocking our reception or messing up the data transmission or—”

“But Miguel said the DSN was fine,” Kevin objected, following after his father.

“Miguel is probably wrong.”

“Or you could have just lost a few billion dollars’ worth of equipment! And billions more if those other spacecraft were knocked out too!”

Dr. Mycroft turned to face his son and forced a smile. “Maybe, maybe not. But hey, that just gives us the chance to upgrade everything, right?”

The scientist looked at his watch while Kevin eyed him skeptically. “I need to head out to the University and get to the bottom of this. Why don’t you come along? We can study the space storm of the century together!”

“I wish I could,” Kevin said. He meant it. This was one of the few times he actually wanted to visit his father’s workplace. There was something unusual happening and he couldn’t help being genuinely curious. Even if it didn’t affect much of anything on Earth, it might turn out to be some sort of new space weather discovery.

His father smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s okay if you don’t have all of your homework done yet. This could be even more important.”

Kevin almost laughed. He couldn’t believe his father actually thought he was worried about homework. Just because he consistently made A’s didn’t mean he worked that hard, or even cared that much about his classes. High school never was much of a challenge to Kevin, at least not the academic side of high school. On a typical day he’d leave half his homework to finish up on the bus ride to school, or he’d throw something together right before class started. He was always amazed that his teachers had no idea that he wasn’t trying very hard, and instead rewarded him with accolades for sloppy last-minute work.

Today, Kevin had plans for something a whole lot more fun than homework—even more fun than watching his dad try to save NASA’s ass.

“It’s not homework,” he told his father, “Joseph is coming by soon. We were going to head over to Grainger Park and try out our…” Kevin trailed off when he saw a familiar disappointed look come over his father’s face. Anything not related to science was evidently a waste of time and energy.

Dr. Mycroft turned away and sighed, then glanced again at his watch. “I’ll see you tonight. Food’s in the fridge. Bye,” he tossed over his shoulder as he rushed out.

“Bye,” Kevin said to the closed door.

There was a brief and familiar pang of longing that he chose to ignore. He glanced at the hallway clock, realized his own sense of urgency, and bounded up the stairs. Joseph would be by to pick him up in fifteen minutes, and he needed to have all his gear ready by then.

But he also had to satisfy a nagging curiosity about the opportunity he just rejected. He entered his bedroom, pushed aside a pile of comics, and flopped onto his bed while pulling his phone from his pocket. Now that his father wasn’t around, he could look up information that he was too embarrassed to admit he didn’t already know. Pulling up a web browser, he did a quick search for “CME” together with “magnetic cloud.” Seconds later he was reading a detailed page on coronal mass ejections.

Large eruptions of plasma were common on the sun, several times a day during the peak of each eleven-year solar cycle. They were kind of like solar volcanoes, only billions of times bigger than volcanoes on Earth. When large eruptions happened...