All articles tagged with #solar wind
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.
SMILE, a joint European-Chinese mission, launched from Kourou to image Earth’s magnetopause with soft X‑ray optics, enabling a three-year study of how the magnetosphere responds to solar wind and space weather while highlighting ongoing EU‑China scientific cooperation.
A joint ESA-Chinese mission named SMILE will launch to study how solar storms interact with Earth's magnetosphere by capturing X-ray emissions—the first such observations—from a highly elliptical orbit that will reach up to 121,000 km above Earth. Equipped with an X-ray imager, UV imager, ion analyzer and magnetometer, SMILE aims to improve space-weather understanding for satellites, astronauts and power grids over an initial three-year mission.
Astronomers using the eROSITA X-ray telescope mapped soft X-ray emissions produced by solar wind charge exchange, revealing how the solar wind “breathes” around the heliosphere and isolating the local solar-system glow from distant cosmic sources.
The European-Chinese Smile mission, a joint ESA-CAS project to study how Earth reacts to solar wind using an X-ray camera for magnetosphere observations and a UV imager for auroras, is rescheduled to launch on May 19, 2026, aboard a European Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana after a precautionary delay due to a Vega-C subsystem issue. The launch time is 05:52 CEST / 04:52 BST / 00:52 local, with Smile released after about 57 minutes into a low-Earth orbit and solar panels unfolding around 63 minutes after liftoff, before entering an elongated orbit peaking about 121,000 km above the North Pole and extending to roughly 5,000 km above the South Pole to deliver data to ground stations. The mission aims to shed light on space weather, solar storms and geomagnetic processes through its four instruments, as ESA and CAS collaborate on this Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer.
A surge of fast solar wind could trigger geomagnetic storms tonight and tomorrow, pushing the Northern Lights into mid-latitude skies from Illinois to Oregon. NOAA forecasts moderate (G2) storms, with the possibility of stronger (G3) bursts. The display is expected to peak between 5 p.m. and 2 a.m. EDT, weather permitting, and skywatchers are advised to find dark, clear sites and use long-exposure photography for the best view.
A large coronal hole opened in the Sun’s atmosphere, sending high-speed solar wind toward Earth and potentially lighting up the Northern Lights across several northern U.S. states Friday night into Saturday morning (Idaho to New York). NOAA forecasts gusty geomagnetic activity (possible G2 storm), which could cause visible auroras under darker skies aided by a new moon. The auroras result from solar particles interacting with Earth’s atmosphere near the poles, driven by coronal holes and related solar wind structures.