Plasma storm

That's no purple star in the distance. It's a plasma storm!

A plasma storm occurs when a star unleashes a large amount of plasma. Plasma storms wreak havoc on machinery, including Transformers and spaceships. As a general rule, one does not want to be anywhere near the vicinity of a plasma storm.

Fiction

Prime cartoon

Optimus Prime and Wheeljack were on a mission to retrieve the AllSpark from Theta Scorpii when a plasma storm occurred. In order to avoid damage to Ultra Magnus's ship, Optimus decided to venture out into open space and bring back the AllSpark himself. Although he made it back to the ship just in time, an asteroid thrown about by the chaos hit the ship, and damaged its communication systems. Predacons Rising