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Space weather and airplane electronics: a known risk that is not well understood

What is known about space radiation and aircraft computer chips, what the 2025 Airbus A320 fix did and did not show, where the safety rules stop, and what a 2026 study suggests for future supersonic jets.

The short version: known, but not well understood

Interpretation: what is known: Particles from space can flip bits in the computer chips on aircraft. Australia's air safety investigator called this "an ongoing risk for airborne equipment" after a 2008 upset. [9]

Interpretation: what is not well understood: How big the risk gets in a severe solar storm. EASA's certification guidance does not cover solar flares. [10] A 2026 review says system-level tolerances "are not known." [14] Two computer models of radiation levels at flight heights during one solar event in 2017 differed by up to 40% near the poles, more than the authors expected. [15]

What this page does not say: No investigator has said radiation caused the 2025 A320 event. The US investigation is still open, and no final cause has been published. [1]

The 2025 Airbus A320 event

What happened on the flight: The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says JetBlue Flight 1230, an Airbus A320, had a sudden pitch change at 35,000 feet on 30 October 2025. It lost about 100 feet of height and diverted to Tampa. 22 people had minor injuries. [1]

What the NTSB says so far: An early review by Airbus found "a concern with ELAC software design as a possible contributing factor." The ELAC is the elevator aileron computer, one of the computers that move the plane's control surfaces. The NTSB says its investigation is ongoing. [1]

What Airbus said: Airbus said on 28 November 2025 that "intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls." It called its fleet action "precautionary." [2]

Airbus's alert to airlines: Its alert to airlines, as published by The Aviation Herald, named "a vulnerability with the ELAC B hardware fitted with software L104 in case of exposure to solar flares." Airbus has not said a solar flare hit the JetBlue jet. [3] [2]

What EASA said in 2026: In July 2026, EASA described the problem as "a susceptibility introduced by a software update." [4] The fix was to go back to the earlier L103+ software. [5] Neither EASA's nor the FAA's directive mentions radiation, and the NTSB has published no final cause. [5] [6] [1]

Interpretation: reading the two together: Airbus's alert and EASA's wording both point to one flight-control computer and its software. Neither is a finding of cause. That will come from the NTSB.

How many jets: Airbus said around 6,000 aircraft were "potentially impacted." It said fewer than 100 still needed the fix by 1 December 2025. [7] The FAA counted 2,007 US-registered jets under its order. About 550 of them might need the computer modified or replaced. [6]

No solar storm that day: Belgium's space weather centre, STCE, says "no proton event was in progress late October." [8] We found no source that says a solar storm was under way on 30 October 2025.

An earlier case: Qantas Flight 72 (2008)

What happened: On 7 October 2008, a Qantas Airbus A330 suddenly pitched nose-down while cruising at 37,000 feet. At least 110 of the 303 passengers and 9 of the 12 crew were injured. [9]

What the investigators found: Australia's Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) found that a design limit in the flight-control software combined with a fault in one of the plane's three air data units. [9]

Was it a particle hit? The ATSB checked several possible triggers for that fault. One was a single event effect, when a high-energy particle strikes a chip. It said there was "insufficient evidence available to determine if an SEE was involved." But it added that "the investigation identified SEE as an ongoing risk for airborne equipment." [9]

Rare, but not a one-off: The ATSB knew of three times this kind of unit fault happened, in over 128 million hours of use. [9]

Where the rules and the science run out

The guidance leaves out solar flares: EASA's guidance for certifying aircraft against single event effects "considers the normal atmospheric radiation levels, which are experienced during a typical flight, and not those which could be experienced during a solar flare." EASA says "further guidance may need to be developed" for such conditions. This guidance dates from 2018, and EASA calls it non-binding. [10]

The main standard has a height limit: An international standard, IEC 62396-1, gives guidance on radiation effects for aircraft electronics "used in aircraft operating at altitudes up to 60 000 ft (18,3 km)." [11]

The storm scale is about satellites: NOAA's scale for solar radiation storms mentions single-event upsets only for satellites. It does not mention aircraft electronics. [12]

Interpretation: tolerances are not known: A 2026 review by Lei, Dyer and Ryden says "Avionics tolerances to SEUs at the system level are not known." An SEU, or single event upset, is a bit flipped by a particle. The review says makers should be asked for full analyses to set flight limits during solar particle events. [14]

Interpretation: backups may be stretched: The same review says new chips are more likely to have several bits flipped at once. It says "Even majority voting and redundancy will be challenged at the most severe levels." It also notes that in the last twenty years, there have been no severe events to test these systems. [14]

Not an independent check: Lei, Dyer and Ryden work at the Surrey Space Centre. That is the same group as the Barker study below, and Dyer, Lei and Ryden are co-authors on it. So their review does not confirm Barker's work on its own. EASA's guidance makes a similar point about the gap from the regulator's side: it does not cover solar flares. [14] [16] [10]

Modeled: the models do not fully agree: Two computer models of radiation levels at flight heights during one solar event in 2017 differed by up to 40% near the poles, more than the authors expected. This study was about radiation levels, not chip errors. Both models found no big rise at airliner heights in that event. The authors said satellite particle data alone were "insufficient" to give consistent results. [15]

The 2026 Barker study and future supersonic jets

The study: A team led by M. Barker at the Surrey Space Centre published a study in Space Weather on 2 November 2026. We could read only its abstract. It opens with the 2025 A320 fleet action, but its own tests are on memory chips, not on the A320's computer. [16]

Measured: lab tests on modern memory chips: The team tested several types of modern memory chip, called SRAM. It measured how easily radiation flips the bits stored in each one. [16]

Measured: tricky errors in one chip type: In one chip type, the team saw complex errors again and again. The authors say standard tests often miss errors like these. They can raise the error rate and the current the chip draws. [16]

Modeled: a very high rate over the poles: The 2026 Barker paper's world map shows a very high error rate over the poles for one memory chip type. It is for heights future supersonic jets may fly. [16]

Modeled: the setting behind the map: In Barker's 2026 PhD thesis, the matching map is for a severe solar event on the scale of February 1956. The thesis, citing a 2020 study, says such an event happens about once every 40–70 years. The map is set at 21 km (about 69,000 ft), not today's airliner cruise heights. We could not read the paper's full text to confirm it uses the same setting. [17] [18]

Modeled: the thesis numbers: For that severe 1956-scale event at 21 km (about 69,000 ft), and for one chip type, the thesis gives up to 3 upsets per Mbit per hour (about 15 with solar protons included). These rates are for the polar regions. An Mbit, or megabit, is about a million bits. These are estimates, not errors counted in flight. The thesis has not been peer-reviewed. [17]

Interpretation: above the standard's range: 21 km is higher than the 60,000 ft (18.3 km) that the IEC avionics standard covers. [11] [17]

Future supersonic jets: NASA's X-59 research jet is designed to fly at Mach 1.4, about 925 mph, at 55,000 feet. It is a test plane only and will never carry passengers. [19]

How a particle from space can flip a bit

Two kinds of space particles: Galactic cosmic rays come from outside our solar system. They arrive all the time, and their mix changes only slowly. [20] Solar radiation storms are different. A big eruption on the Sun speeds up protons to a large share of the speed of light. These storms can last from hours to days. NOAA rates them from S1 to S5. [13] [12]

Particle showers in the air: When cosmic rays hit the air, they make large showers of other particles. [20] A 1996 review found that error rates measured in flight rise and fall with the number of neutrons in the air. Neutrons are one kind of particle in these showers. [21]

What a single event effect is: A memory chip stores data as bits, each a 0 or a 1. When a particle flips one bit, it is called a single event upset. Other single event effects include latch-up and burnout. [21]

Modeled: smaller chips, more errors per chip: A 2010 study used a computer model to follow memory chips as their parts shrank from 250 nm to 22 nm. It predicted that errors per chip would rise 6 to 7 times from 130 nm to 22 nm. It also found that one hit could flip 100 bits or more at once. [22]

Why the poles and high altitudes matter

Less magnetic shielding near the poles: Earth's magnetic field turns many cosmic rays away near the equator. It gives little or no protection near the poles, above about 55 degrees magnetic latitude. [20] Protons from solar radiation storms are also guided down into the air near the poles. [13]

Measured: more neutrons up high: In the air, the number of neutrons peaks at about 60,000 feet. At sea level there are several hundred times fewer than at aircraft heights. [21] For scale, the JetBlue A320 was cruising at 35,000 feet. [1]

Rerouting has a cost: In the October 2003 solar storms, NOAA says airlines "took unprecedented actions in their high latitude routes" to avoid high radiation and radio blackout areas. NOAA put the cost of rerouted flights at "$10,000 to $100,000 per flight." [23]

What this page does and does not cover

About electronics, not people: This page is about computer chips in aircraft. It does not cover radiation dose to crew or passengers, and it is not health advice.

Not a cause finding: Nothing on this page says what caused the JetBlue 1230 event. The NTSB investigation is ongoing. [1]

Not a forecast: For current solar radiation storms, see NOAA SWPC's alerts and its S scale. [13] [12]

This page is general education only. It is not for safety or operational decisions.

Frequently asked questions

Sources were checked on 2026-11-02. Text on this page is original. Quoted figures are attributed and linked to the source. General education only, not for safety or operational decisions. Disclaimer.