These particles are mainly protons and heavier ions that can cause radiation damage, disruption to logic circuits, and even hazards to astronauts.
Crewed missions to return to the Moon or to travel to Mars will have to deal with the major problems presented by solar particle events to radiation safety, in addition to the important contribution to doses from the low-level background cosmic rays.
[3] Electrical anomalies associated with impact events include ESA's Olympus spacecraft, which lost attitude control during the 1993 Perseid meteor shower.
The plasma encountered in the region of the geostationary orbit becomes heated during geomagnetic substorms caused by disturbances in the solar wind.
"Hot" electrons (with energies in the kilo-electron volt range) collect on surfaces of spacecraft and can establish electrostatic potentials of the order of kilovolts.
The field often overlaps with the disciplines of astrophysics, atmospheric science, space physics, and geophysics, albeit usually with an emphasis on application.