“Our study addresses a huge open question about how the solar wind is energized and helps us understand how the Sun affects its environment and, ultimately, the Earth,” said Yeimy Rivera, co-leader of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, part of Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. “If this … Read more
On June 14, 2024, NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) last Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-U, started its journey from the Astrotech Space Operations facility to the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. GOES-U is the final weather-observing and environmental monitoring satellite in NOAA’s GOES-R Series. GOES-U will … Read more
NASA has selected three proposals for concept studies of missions to investigate the complex system of space weather that surrounds our planet and how it’s connected to Earth’s atmosphere. The three concepts propose how to enact the DYNAMIC (Dynamical Neutral Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling) mission, which was recommended by the 2013 Decadal Survey for Solar and Space … Read more
NASA announced Tuesday it selected a new instrument to study the Sun and how it creates massive solar eruptions. The agency’s Joint EUV coronal Diagnostic Investigation, or JEDI, will capture images of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light, a type of light invisible to our eyes but reveals many of the underlying mechanisms of the … Read more
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured these images of the solar flare on May 14, 2024 — as seen in the bright flash on the right side. These images show a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colorized in royal blue and gold. This flare shows … Read more
In the past, solar eclipses have driven numerous scientific discoveries. For this solar eclipse, NASA is funding several scientific experiments – including the three using the WB-57s – to make measurements during the eclipse. NASA’s WB-57s fly much higher than commercial aircraft. This altitude allows the jets to fly above clouds – meaning no chance … Read more
To build their model, researchers at Predictive Science use measurements of the Sun’s changing magnetic field at the solar surface to drive their model in near real-time. A key to this innovation was creating an automated process that converts raw data from SDO to show how magnetic flux and energy are injected into the corona … Read more
On Dec. 7, 2023, Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, signed on behalf of the agency the Memorandum of Agreement for Space Weather Research-To-Operations-To-Research Collaboration. This quad-agency agreement is between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Air Force. The memorandum outlines the responsibilities for … Read more