Press Releases & Feature Stories Archive - Space Weather Laboratory

Impacts of Strong Solar Flares

05.13.2013

While we need to protect Earth from the most intense forms of space weather, some people worry that a gigantic flare could hurl enough energy to destroy Earth, but this is not actually possible.

The Sun Sends Two CMEs Toward Mercury

04.25.2013

On April 24-25, 2013, the sun erupted with two coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that can affect electronic systems in satellites. Missions Messenger and STEREO-A maybe affected.

NASA Mission to Study What Disrupts Radio Waves

04.25.2013

The EVEX (Equatorial Vortex Experiment) sounding rocket help scientists better understand and predict the electrical storms in Earth's upper atmosphere that can interfere with satellite signals.

NASA’s Wind Mission Encounters ‘SLAMS’ Waves

04.16.2013

From 1998 to 2002, NASA's Wind spacecraft traveled through the foreshock region in front of Earth 17 times, providing new information, like short large amplitude magnetic structures (SLAMS).

NASA scientists build first-ever wide-field X-ray imager

02.07.2013

Three NASA scientists teamed up to develop and demonstrate NASA's first wide-field-of-view soft X-ray camera for studying "charge exchange."

VISIONS: Seeing the Aurora in a New Light

01.31.2013

With a launch window opening February 2, VISIONS will study how oxygen atoms leave Earth’s atmosphere under the influence of the aurora.

RBSP Instrument Telemetry Provides 'Textbook' Excitement

09.12.2012

An important window for RBSP and SAMPEX to share data about the radiation belts was quickly closing, so the Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT) instrument was turned on only two days after launch, instead of the originally-planned 30 days.

RBSP Launches Successfully - Twin Probes are Healthy as Mission Begins

08.30.2012

NASA's RBSP missing successfully launched this morning at 4:05 a.m. EDT. The twin probes were released from the rocket's Centaur upper stage one at a time and sent off into different orbits, kicking off the two-year mission to study Earth's radiation belts.

Space Weather: Explosions on Venus

03.05.2012

A recent study, appearing online in the JGR on February 29, 2012, has found clear evidence on Venus for a type of space weather outburst quite common at Earth, called a hot flow anomaly. These anomalies, also known as HFAs, cause a temporary reversal of the solar wind that normally moves past a planet.

NASA Develops Space Weather App for Android Smartphones and Tablet Users

02.28.2012

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. is pleased to announce that its Space Weather App, previously only available for iPhone users, is now available for users of Android smartphone and tablet users.

Space Weather Center to Add World's First 'Ensemble Forecasting' Capability

01.27.2012

Chief space weather forecasters Yihua Zheng and Antti Pulkkinen are helping to implement a computer technique ( Ensemble Forecasting ) that will improve NASA’s ability to predict the path and impact of severe solar storms.

Asteroids, Mars and Drought Among NASA News Highlights at AGU

12.01.2011

NASA researchers will present new findings on a wide range of Earth and space science topics at the 2011 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Complete list of NASA-related AGU news briefings

Lightning-made Waves in Earth's Atmosphere Leak Into Space

11.28.2011

Now, NASA's Vector Electric Field Instrument (VEFI) aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite has detected Schumann resonance from space.

New FASTSAT Discoveries Paint Detailed View of Region Near Earth

11.14.2011

Auroras are but one part of a complex system of magnetic fields and charged particles surrounding Earth. Instruments on FASTSAT are beginning to paint a picture of how the different components act in concert.

Firestation in Space to Open Firehose of Lightning Data

10.17.2011

Doug Rowland and his team recently secured another flight opportunity for a pint-sized instrument studying lightning in Earth's upper atmosphere and now are bracing for a veritable "fire hose" of data about a little-understood phenomenon first discovered by scientists nearly two decades ago.

Two NASA Probes (ARTEMIS) Tackle New Mission: Studying the Moon

07.19.2011

A NASA led team of scientists and engineers has repositioned two small probes from Earth’s orbit where they studied space weather to begin orbiting the moon to study its interior and surface composition.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/artemis/news/P2-lunarOrbit.html

STS-135 Crew and ISS Sees Aurora Australis

07.18.2011

On July 14th, astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) witnessed a broad curtain of green auroras over the southern hemisphere. The display was caused by a solar wind stream which hit Earth's magnetic field on July 12th.

First-Ever View of a Sungrazer Comet In Front of the Sun

07.07.2011

For the first time ever, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a 20-minute movie of the comet streaking directly in front of the sun.

Sounding Rockets Study How Winds In Space Drive Currents in the Upper Atmosphere

07.05.2011

Scientists will fly two pair of rockets. One in each pair will collect data about the neutral and charged gas particles through which it travels. The other will shoot out a long trail of lithium gas to track the wind movement.

Getting Ready for the Next Big Solar Storm

06.22.2011

This week, officials have gathered in Washington DC to ask themselves a simple question: What if it happens again? The purpose of Space Weather Enterprise Forum (SWEF) is to raise awareness of space weather and its effects on society especially among policy makers and emergency responders.

Solstice Flare and CME - UPDATE

06.22.2011

A CME propelled toward Earth on June 21 may be moving slower than originally thought. Our Space Weather Lab analysts have downgraded the probable speed to 400 mph (650 km/s). Impact is now expected June 24 at 3am EDT (0700 UT). Forecasters now predict a relatively mild G1-class geomagnetic storm when the cloud arrives.

FASTSAT Mission Update

06.20.2011

The Plasma Impedance Spectrum Analyzer (PISA) has now completed more than 120 days over the course of six months since it was first turned on. The Miniature Imager for Neutral Ionospheric Atoms and Magnetospheric Electrons (MINI-ME) is functioning well after six months in space. The Thermospheric Temperature Imager (TTI) has collected more than 50 days of data.