An increase in solar activity will result in more atmospheric drag on satellites and risk damaging or disrupting those spacecraft.

As the Sun becomes more active after a nearly three-year activity slumber, the massive solar storms that lie ahead of us for the upcoming several sunspot-cycle years will not respect any geographic boundaries or political borders.

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Brian Berger is editor in chief of SpaceNews.com and the SpaceNews magazine. He joined SpaceNews.com in 1998, spending his first decade with the publication covering NASA. He was named senior staff writer in 2004, a position he held until being named...