INDEPENDENT.CO.UK

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were forced to alter their routine sleeping positions due to the threat posed by solar particles from an extreme “cannibal” storm, an update from the orbiting outpost reveals.

Out of caution, the three Russian cosmonauts aboard the space station were instructed to spend the night in the ISS laboratory module, according to a recent communication between Nasa mission control and the crew.

“We entered into an energetic solar particle event this morning, and we’re going to go in and out of holes of higher than the baseline [radiation] risk,” a mission control operator told astronaut Mike Fincke aboard the ISS, according to Space.com.

The British Geological Survey had earlier warned that a series of solar storms released from the Sun this week could feed off another one, creating one of the biggest “cannibal storms” since 2005.