The highest intensity portion of the SAA drifts to the west at a speed of about 0.3 degrees per year, and is noticeable in the references listed below. The drift rate of the SAA is very close to the rotation differential between the Earth’s core and its surface, estimated to be between 0.3 and 0.5 degrees per year.
Current literature suggests that a slow weakening of the geomagnetic field is one of several causes for the changes in the borders of the SAA since its discovery. As the geomagnetic field continues to weaken, the inner Van Allen belt gets closer to the Earth, with a commensurate enlargement of the SAA at given altitudes.
This is what I told the physicists back in the early 1990’s as it all came to me in a vision and was explained to me.
Astronauts are also affected by this region, which is said to be the cause of peculiar “shooting stars” (phosphenes) seen in the visual field of astronauts, an effect termed the cosmic ray visual phenomena.[
Passing through the South Atlantic Anomaly is thought to be the reason for the early failures of the Globalstar network’s satellites.
The PAMELA experiment, while passing through the SAA, detected antiproton levels that were orders of magnitude higher than expected. This suggests the Van Allen belt confines antiparticles produced by the interaction of the Earth’s upper atmosphere with cosmic rays.
NASA has reported that modern laptops have crashed when Space Shuttle flights passed through the anomaly.
In October 2012, the SpaceX CRS-1 Dragon spacecraft attached to the International Space Station experienced a transient problem as it passed through the anomaly.
The SAA is believed to have started a series of events leading to the destruction of the Hitomi, Japan’s most powerful X-ray observatory. The anomaly transiently disabled a direction-finding mechanism, causing the satellite to fall back on gyroscopes that were not working properly, after which it spun itself apart.