Browse Archive

  • Screen capture from IRIS mission trailer video showing an active solar surface.

    IRIS Mission Readies For a New Challenge

    NASA is getting ready to launch a new mission to observe a mysterious region of the solar atmosphere that may be crucial to understanding what powers space weather.

  • A combined view from two NASA satellites of the coronal mass ejection that occurred on May 17, 2013, at 5:36 EDT.

    NASA’s STEREO Detects a CME From the Sun

    On 5:24 a.m. EDT on May 17, 2013, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space.

  • SOHO image of solar flare from 2003

    Impacts of Strong Solar Flares

    Some people worry that a gigantic "killer solar flare" could hurl enough energy to destroy Earth, but this is not actually possible.

  • A NASA Terrier Improved Orion leaves the launch pad on roi Namur, Republic of the Marshall Islands on May 9.

    Marshall Islands Campaign Completed

    The launch of a NASA Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket on May 9 brought to an end a very successful campaign studying ionospheric activity and its impact on radio, communication and navigation signals.

  • Artist's concept of Voyager and an updated gauge

    NASA Invites the Public to Fly Along with Voyager

    NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft are on the verge of plunging into interstellar space -- the space between stars -- and two new Web tools let the public fly along.

  • composite SDO image of sun from April 2012-April 2013

    Three Years of SDO Images

    Since it first provided images of the sun in spring 2010, SDO has had virtually unbroken coverage of the sun's rise toward solar maximum.

  • The EUNIS team stands in front of the sounding rocket before its second launch on Nov. 6, 2007.

    EUNIS: Six Minutes in the Life of the Sun

    The EUNIS experiment was successfully launched at 1:30 pm EDT on April 23, 2013 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Preliminary data shows that the experiment performed as planned.

  • Workers unload NASA's IRIS spacecraft from a truck at the processing facility at Vandenberg where the spacecraft will be readied for launch aboard an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket

    Solar Satellite Arrives at Vandenberg AFB for Launch

    IRIS spacecraft arrives at VAFB for final preparations for a NET May 28 launch aboard a Pegasus rocket.

  • Earth is surrounded by a giant magnetic bubble called the magnetosphere. As it travels through space, a complex system of charged particles from the sun and magnetic structures piles up in front of it.

    NASA’s Wind Mission Encounters ‘SLAMS’ Waves

    SLAMS, or short large amplitude magnetic structures, have been spotted in the froth of waves in front of Earthspace as it moves through the solar system. They create a magnetic mirror reflecting fast ion beams into space.

  • This graphic shows when high frequency radio waves, such as those used for the Global Positioning System (GPS) travel through a disturbed layer of Earth’s electrically charged atmosphere, the ionosphere, they can be disrupted.

    Celebrating CINDI on Its Fifth Anniversary

    On April 16, 2008, a suite of NASA instruments was launched to study a unique region of space: the electrically charged portion of the upper atmosphere called the ionosphere, a region crucial for radio communications.