At the foot of sheer Rocky Mountain slabs, on a secure federal campus in Boulder, Colorado, a woman seated alone in a dark room watches banks of computer screens that show in dozens of ways what’s happening 150 million kilometers away on the surface of the sun. The information gathered by senior space weather forecaster Briana Kay Muhlestein and others at the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) will be packaged and published on a website maintained by this office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It’s information from a host of sources developed for public consumption but used mainly…
Apogee
Two instruments Japan is launching for the United States Space Force mark the beginning of what the service hopes will be a lasting technology partnership. The first of the two optical instruments lifted off in February 2025 from the Tanegashima Space Center atop an H3 rocket, the new mainstay launch vehicle for JAXA — the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. Both instruments were developed for the Space Force by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory. They ride into orbit attached to new Michibiki satellites that are part of Japan’s version of GPS – the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System or QZSS. In…
Photos by the INDIAN SPACE RESEARCH ORGANISATION India has climbed further in its pursuit of space capabilities with the successful docking of two small, unmanned spacecraft in low Earth orbit. India is just the fourth nation to accomplish the feat. The spacecraft, each the size of a large refrigerator, linked up on January 16, 2025, after a week’s delay — 17 days after they were launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre aboard an Indian-made Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Called Target and Chaser, the spacecraft comprise the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) mission known as Space Docking Experiment (SpaDex). SpaDex…
Space would serve as a backup in the face of growing threats to underwater internet cables under a new NATO-funded initiative. The consortium leading the project, called HEIST for Hybrid Space/Submarine Architecture Ensuring Infosec of Telecommunications, aims to develop a network combining submarine cables and satellite communications to ensure a continual flow of data, according to an August 2024 NATO news release. The $2.5 million project was partially funded by NATO’s Science for Peace and Security (SPS) program. Partners in the program include NATO nations, institutions such as Cornell and Johns Hopkins universities in the United States, Bifröst University in…
Satellite company Iceye leads a consortium that will produce new intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities for military users such as the Finnish Defence Forces. Helsinki-based Iceye, specializing in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite operations for Earth observation, will be joined by Finnish companies Insta, Huld and DA-Group, and the Finnish Meteorological Institute, working together with Lockheed Martin of the United States. The new military capabilities will be especially suitable for the demanding Arctic weather and light conditions of NATO’s northern flank, Iceye said in a November 2024 news release. These capabilities include analytics using artificial intelligence, ISR cell development…
The eyes of the world are trained on the sun. The satellite known as SOHO had a projected lifespan of just two years, but three decades after its launch in 1995, it still provides up to three days’ warning when solar storms threaten Earth systems. SOHO, an acronym for the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, was built in Europe, equipped by Europe, Japan and the United States, and orbited by NASA. Starting in mid-2025, two missions now circling Earth — Aditya-L1, India’s first solar probe, and the dual-satellite Proba-3 mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) — are scheduled to work…
On February 8, 2022, 38 satellites en route to the SpaceX Starlink constellation lost altitude and fell into the atmosphere because of a space weather event that scientists later categorized as a G1 storm — the lowest level on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) solar storm scale. Researchers estimated the value of the lost satellites and largely wasted launch at close to $50 million. Three decades earlier, in March 1989, a powerful geomagnetic storm induced by a solar flare led to the collapse of the Hydro-Quebec power grid in eastern Canada. A 2002 study in Space Weather, a journal…
Europe’s Meteorological Operational (Metop) satellite series showcases a history of close collaboration between the continent and the United States to monitor weather, climate and Earth’s atmosphere. Two of the satellites in the Metop series are expected to remain in service through 2027 and 2030, operated by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the European Space Agency (ESA) and other international partners. They are among some 47,500 objects in space — active payloads, unspecified objects and debris — monitored by the U.S. Space Force at space-track.org. EUMETSAT splits global coverage with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric…
Shawn Dahl was deep into a tabletop simulation about solar storms with other federal staff on May 9, 2024, when notification came about the real thing. It turned out to be one of the largest geomagnetic storms in a generation. The G5 event — the most intense on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) geomagnetic storm scale — unfolded over two to three days. Planes were rerouted to overcome high-frequency radio interference, and power grids experienced electrical surges. Satellites encountered drag, potentially shortening their lifespan, and many GPS receivers stopped working. “We start talking to the forecasters back at…
Giving out light and heat, the star we call the sun is the source of life on Earth. But this fusion reaction at the center of our solar system also produces space weather that could wipe out the atmosphere and rob the planet of the air we breathe. A complex and dynamic bubble known as the magnetosphere — where magnetic fields produced within Earth rise to meet cosmic radiation, charged particles and fireballs hurled by powerful solar winds — protects the planet against most harmful effects from the sun. Some get through, throwing off power grids, satellites on orbit and…