The Space Weather Forecasting Centre has been inaugurated in Adelaide to help Australia's space industry prepare for space weather events. ANU astrophysicist and cosmologist Dr Brad Tucker says the Bureau of Meteorology has previously been handling space weather events but it will now be handled by the new centre. “Just as we forecast weather here on Earth – and that can tell us how to be prepared,” he told Sky News Australia. “In space, this is about saying when these solar storms erupt – and this quite often on the sun – is it going to hit the earth, is it going to affect infrastructure on the ground in Australia or Australian infrastructure in space?” Dr Tucker said the Space Weather Forecasting Centre was “focussing on Australia-based assets” as solar storms can disrupt GPS and other types of networks. “It’s a really important step and a good initiative by the federal government to just say ‘look, we can't ignore this, we’re growing more and more dependent now and we can’t rely on overseas partners to do the forecasting and look out for Australia, we need to do it in house’,” he said.
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