All articles tagged with #solar wind
A 2024 reanalysis argues Voyager 2’s 1986 Uranus flyby occurred during an exceptionally compressed solar wind—an event estimated to happen only about 4% of the time—reframing the encounter as a rare snapshot that may explain Uranus’s unusual magnetosphere and radiation belts, and underscoring the need for multi-year orbital observations rather than a single flyby.
Researchers using MAVEN and Tianwen-1 show that solar wind drives Kelvin-Helmholtz waves at Mars’ atmospheric boundary, creating giant waves that strip atmospheric particles into space. This effect is uneven around the planet and depends on the solar wind's electric field, offering a key explanation for Mars’ historic atmosphere loss and implications for other unmagnetized worlds.
A WIRED study argues that Earth's magnetic response to solar wind may not have a true upper limit. By accounting for timing delays and variability in solar wind measurements, the apparent saturation disappears and the response appears linear, implying Carrington-scale storms could be about twice as damaging as older models predicted.
A NASA-led study published in Nature finds a longstanding measurement bias from L1 solar-wind data has caused scientists to underestimate how powerful extreme solar storms can be. By comparing million-scale wind-energy measurements with closer, near-Earth observations from THEMIS, MMS, and DoubleStar, the researchers found no statistical evidence of an upper limit to energy transfer from the solar wind to Earth’s polar ionosphere. If there is indeed no ceiling, the worst-case space weather scenarios used in planning could be too mild, with potential disruptions to satellites, GPS, and communications, prompting a revision of extreme-storm modeling and preparedness.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe reached about 692,000 km/h (192.22 km/s) relative to the Sun while skimming the Sun’s corona during its 28th close approach in June 2026, a record for a human-made object. The peak speed comes from a highly elliptical near-Sun orbit aided by Venus flybys; Parker’s shield protects its instruments as it studies coronal heating and solar wind, with mission extensions still under review and no sustained cruise speed implied by this record.
A Nature study argues the Earth’s response to extreme solar storms may be stronger than previously estimated because most measurements come from near the Sun–Earth L1 point. When researchers analyzed data from spacecraft closer to Earth, they found geomagnetic disturbances continue to rise with solar-wind strength, suggesting rare one-in-a-thousand-year events could have greater impacts on satellites, GPS, communications, and power grids, even as such events remain extremely rare. Historical storms like the Carrington Event and Quebec blackout are cited to illustrate potential risks, underscoring the need to rethink extreme space-weather risk assessments during solar maximum.
NASA’s New Horizons woke from a nearly yearlong hibernation about 6 billion miles from Earth and is expected to operate into the 2050s, studying how the solar wind slows as it moves through the Kuiper Belt and planning one more flyby with Rubin Observatory help. Measurements show solar wind is about 13-15% slower at the edge than near Earth.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe detected voltage spikes from clouds of charged dust near the Sun, suggesting dust interacts with Alfvén waves and the solar wind to deposit energy into the corona. This could help explain why the corona reaches millions of degrees hotter than the Sun’s surface and may influence how future solar missions study near-sun dust.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, pushed closer to the Sun than any spacecraft by reaching about 3.8 million miles from the solar surface at ~430,000 mph during the December 2024 pass; its 4.5-inch-thick, 2.3-meter heat shield—a carbon-carbon sandwich with a carbon foam core weighing ~160 pounds and a white alumina coating—keeps the instruments at room temperature while the sun-facing side reaches up to 2,500°F, with actual temperatures staying well below worst-case estimates, providing thermal margin; the mission has transformed solar physics by directly measuring the corona and solar wind, and is planned to operate through 2026 as it conducts further perihelia.
Mars once had a global magnetic field strong enough to shield its atmosphere from the solar wind, but when the dynamo faded around four billion years ago the atmosphere and surface water were gradually stripped away by solar wind over hundreds of millions to billions of years, turning Mars from a possibly habitable world into the current cold desert; the loss was slow and interlinked with interior cooling and crustal water sequestration, with MAVEN confirming ongoing atmospheric loss today.
SwRI researchers merged a solar wind forecasting method with heliosphere models to predict where New Horizons will encounter the termination shock, the outer boundary of the heliosphere. They estimate the crossing could occur between 2029 and 2040, with the possibility of multiple crossings as the heliosphere expands and contracts, helping plan future measurements at the solar system's edge.
In December 2024, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe flew into the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, at a record 430,000 mph, surviving thanks to a 4.5-inch carbon-carbon Thermal Protection System that kept its interior near room temperature and enabling data return on the Sun’s extreme environment while it continues its mission to study solar wind.
From a SpaceX Dragon capsule above Earth, NASA astronaut Jessica Meir filmed a timelapse of the Aurora Australis dancing across the southern sky after a solar wind event; scientists explain the colors indicate oxygen at different altitudes, and Meir’s footage comes as she conducts an eight‑month ISS science mission.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has repeatedly traversed the Sun’s corona—the outer atmosphere where temperatures soar above a million degrees—giving in-situ measurements that deepen the mystery of why the corona is so hot. A December 2024 near-surface pass (6.1 million km from the Sun, traveling ~692,000 km/h) confirmed the craft’s survival and enabled direct plasma, magnetic-field, and flow readings. The results keep the heating question open, highlighting two leading ideas—wave heating and small-scale magnetic reconnection (nanoflares)—neither of which is yet confirmed as dominant. The mission also finds switchbacks (abrupt magnetic reversals) abundant in the near-Sun solar wind but apparently absent inside the corona, refining how the wind is accelerated and fed by coronal processes. With repeated passes through late 2026 and NASA’s review looming, Parker’s data are helping to distinguish between competing explanations, but the exact energy transfer powering the corona remains unresolved.
NASA’s MAVEN data, gathered after it went quiet in 2025, reveal the Zwan-Wolf effect—an Earth-style solar-wind deflection—occurring in Mars’ upper atmosphere during a December 2023 solar storm. The finding suggests Mars’ atmosphere can host temporary magnetic structures that funnel charged particles, implying the effect may operate continuously there but is usually too weak to detect; the results were published in Nature Communications. NASA also notes MAVEN’s ongoing recovery efforts after a period of contact loss.