On a daily basis, the Sun experiences solarweather events, such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and solar flares. Varying in size, they are characterised by violent outbursts of matter and energy from the Sun’s surface. In the rare case of a CME of significant size hitting Earth, it could have immense consequences for the electrical power grid, especially at auroral latitudes. CMEs cause large disturbances to the Earth’s geomagnetic field, which result in an increased energy flux. In turn, this would induce large power surges in power lines, electrical wiring, and pipelines. If a system is not protected from such surges, it could short-circuit and be damaged or destroyed. Adverse space weather effects are not only limited to Earth-based electronics but also satellites, which are even more exposed to space weather than Earthbased electronics due to trapped particles. Without an early warning of an incoming CME, the damage of an extreme CME would be catastrophic, causing up to $10 trillion in damage just from damaged infrastructure... ... Read more

Launch costs for high-resolution space telescopes for Earth observation can be reduced when the telescope mirrors are made deployable. However, such a system is subject to optical aberrations that decreases image quality. To counter these aberrations, an Aberration Correction System (ACS) is proposed that uses a deformable mirror (DM) which is calibrated by applying image sharpness optimisation. A stochastic gradient descent algorithm is applied to the output of two image detectors, such that the DM deformation can even be optimised during in-orbit scanning operations, without the need for a dedicated wavefront sensor. The effects of different sharpness metrics and algorithm settings have been analysed. With this novel control method, an average Strehl ratio of above 0.9 and 0.8 can be achieved on the central field and extreme field of the primary detector respectively. Also, in-orbit drift effects can be actively compensated without interrupting nominal operations. ... Read more