Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
Camera ‘hack’ lets Solar Orbiter peer deeper into Sun’s atmosphere
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
5 min read
NASA CubeSat Finds New Radiation Belts After May 2024 Solar Storm
Key Points
The May 2024 solar storm created two new temporary belts of high-energy particles surrounding Earth. Such belts have been seen before, but the new ones were particularly long lasting, especially the new proton belt. The findings are particularly important for spacecraft launching into geostationary orbits, which can be damaged as they traverse the dangerous belts. The largest solar storm in two decades hit Earth in May 2024. For several days, wave after wave of high-energy charged particles from the Sun rocked the planet. Brilliant auroras engulfed the skies, and some GPS communications were temporarily disrupted.
With the help of a serendipitously resurrected small NASA satellite, scientists have discovered that this storm also created two new temporary belts of energetic particles encircling Earth. The findings are important to understanding how future solar storms could impact our technology.
The new belts formed between two others that permanently surround Earth called the Van Allen Belts. Shaped like concentric rings high above Earth’s equator, these permanent belts are composed of a mix of high-energy electrons and protons that are trapped in place by Earth’s magnetic field. The energetic particles in these belts can damage spacecraft and imperil astronauts who pass through them, so understanding their dynamics is key to safe spaceflight.
The May 2024 solar storm created two extra radiation belts, sandwiched between the two permanent Van Allen Belts. One of the new belts, shown in purple, included a population of protons, giving it a unique composition that hadn’t been seen before. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Kristen Perrin The discovery of the new belts, made possible by NASA’s Colorado Inner Radiation Belt Experiment (CIRBE) satellite and published Feb. 6, 2025, in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, is particularly important for protecting spacecraft launching into geostationary orbits, since they travel through the Van Allen Belts several times before reaching their final orbit.
New Belts Amaze Scientists
Temporary belts have been detected in the aftermath of large solar storms before. But while previous belts have been composed mostly of electrons, the innermost of the two new belts also included energetic protons. This unique composition is likely due to the strength and composition of the solar storm.
“When we compared the data from before and after the storm, I said, ‘Wow, this is something really new,’” said the paper’s lead author Xinlin Li, a professor at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. “This is really stunning.”
The new belts also seem to have lasted much longer than previous belts. Whereas previous temporary belts lasted around four weeks, the new belt composed primary of electrons lasted more than three months. The other belt, that also includes protons, has lasted much longer than the electron belt because it is in a more stable region and is less prone to the physical processes that can knock the particles out of orbit. It is likely still there today.
“These are really high-energy electrons and protons that have found their way into Earth’s inner magnetic environment,” said David Sibeck, former mission scientist for NASA’s Van Allen Probes and research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was not involved with the new study. “Some might stay in this place for a very long time.”
How long such belts stick around depends on passing solar storms. Large storms can provide the energy to knock particles in these belts out of their orbits and send them spiraling off into space or down to Earth. One such storm at the end of June significantly decreased the size of the new electron belt and another in August nearly erased the remainder of that electron belt, though a small population of high-energy electrons endured.
CubeSat Fortuitously Comes Back to Life to Make the Discovery
The new discovery was made by NASA’s CIRBE satellite, a CubeSat about the size of a shoebox that circled the planet’s magnetic poles in a low Earth orbit from April 2023 to October 2024. CIRBE housed an instrument called the Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope integrated little experiment-2 (REPTile-2) — a miniaturized and upgraded version of an instrument that flew aboard NASA’s Van Allen Probes, which made the first discovery of a temporary electron belt in 2013.
The CIRBE CubeSat in the laboratory before launch. CIRBE was designed and built by LASP at the University of Colorado Boulder. Xinlin Li/LASP/CU Boulder After a year in space, the CubeSat experienced an anomaly and unexpectedly went quiet on April 15, 2024. The scientists were disappointed to miss the solar storm in May but were able to rely on other spacecraft to provide some preliminary data on the electron belt. Luckily, on June 15, the spacecraft sprang back to life and resumed taking measurements. The data provided high-resolution information that couldn’t be gleaned by any other instrument and allowed the scientists to understand the magnitude of the new belts.
“Once we resumed measurements, we were able to see the new electron belt, which wasn’t visible in the data from other spacecraft,” Li said.
Having the CubeSat in orbit to measure the effect of the solar storm has been bittersweet, Li said. While it provided the opportunity to measure the effects of such a large event, the storm also increased atmospheric drag on the CubeSat, which caused its orbit to decrease prematurely. As a result, the CubeSat deorbited in October 2024. However, the spacecraft’s data makes it all worth it.
“We are very proud that our very small CubeSat made such a discovery,” Li said.
CIRBE was designed and built by LASP at the University of Colorado Boulder and was launched through NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI). The mission is sponsored by NASA’s Heliophysics Flight Opportunities for Research & Technology (H-FORT) program.
By Mara Johnson-Groh
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Share
Details
Last Updated Feb 06, 2025 Related Terms
Heliophysics CubeSats Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Division Ionosphere Space Weather The Sun Van Allen Probes Explore More
5 min read Straight Shot: Hubble Investigates Galaxy with Nine Rings
Article
2 days ago
2 min read Hubble Spots a Supernova
Article
6 days ago
2 min read Hubble Studies the Tarantula Nebula’s Outskirts
Article
2 weeks ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
By European Space Agency
Video: 00:00:40 Back in 2023, we reported on Solar Orbiter’s discovery of tiny jets near the Sun’s south pole that could be powering the solar wind. The team behind this research has now used even more data from the European Space Agency’s prolific solar mission to confirm that these jets exist all over dark patches in the Sun’s atmosphere, and that they really are a source of not only fast but also slow solar wind.
The newfound jets can be seen in this sped-up video as hair-like wisps that flash very briefly, for example within the circled regions of the Sun's surface. In reality they last around one minute and fling out charged particles at about 100 km/s.
The surprising result is published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics, highlighting how Solar Orbiter’s unique combination of instruments can unveil the mysteries of the star at the centre of our Solar System.
The solar wind is the never-ending rain of electrically charged particles given out by the Sun. It pervades the Solar System and its effects can be felt on Earth. Yet despite decades of study, its origin remained poorly understood. Until now.
The solar wind comes in two main forms: fast and slow. We have known for decades that the fast solar wind comes from the direction of dark patches in the Sun’s atmosphere called coronal holes – regions where the Sun’s magnetic field does not turn back down into the Sun but rather stretches deep into the Solar System.
Charged particles can flow along these ‘open’ magnetic field lines, heading away from the Sun, and creating the solar wind. But a big question remained: how do these particles get launched from the Sun in the first place?
Building upon their previous discovery, the research team (led by Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany) used Solar Orbiter’s onboard ‘cameras’ to spot more tiny jets within coronal holes close to the Sun’s equator.
By combining these high-resolution images with direct measurements of solar wind particles and the Sun’s magnetic field around Solar Orbiter, the researchers could directly connect the solar wind measured at the spacecraft back to those exact same jets.
What’s more, the team was surprised to find not just fast solar wind coming from these jets, but also slow solar wind. This is the first time that we can say for sure that at least some of the slow solar wind also comes from tiny jets in coronal holes – until now, the origin of the solar wind had been elusive.
The fact that the same underlying process drives both fast and slow solar wind comes as a surprise. The discovery is only possible thanks to Solar Orbiter’s unique combination of advanced imaging systems, as well as its instruments that can directly detect particles and magnetic fields.
The measurements were taken when Solar Orbiter made close approaches to the Sun in October 2022 and April 2023. These close approaches happen roughly twice a year; during the next ones, the researchers hope to collect more data to better understand how these tiny jets ‘launch’ the solar wind.
Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. This research used data from Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), Solar Wind Plasma Analyser (SWA) and Magnetometer (MAG). Find out more about the instruments Solar Orbiter is using to reveal more about the Sun.
Read our news story from 2023 about how Solar Orbiter discovered tiny jets that could power the solar wind
Read more about how Solar Orbiter can trace the solar wind back to its source region on the Sun
View the full article
-
By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Captured by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 4, 2021, this impact crater was found in Cerberus Fossae, a seismically active region of the Red Planet. Scien-tists matched its appearance on the surface with a quake detected by NASA’s InSight lander. With help from AI, scientists discovered a fresh crater made by an impact that shook material as deep as the Red Planet’s mantle.
Meteoroids striking Mars produce seismic signals that can reach deeper into the planet than previously known. That’s the finding of a pair of new papers comparing marsquake data collected by NASA’s InSight lander with impact craters spotted by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The papers, published on Monday, Feb. 3, in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), highlight how scientists continue to learn from InSight, which NASA retired in 2022 after a successful extended mission. InSight set the first seismometer on Mars, detecting more than 1,300 marsquakes, which are produced by shaking deep inside the planet (caused by rocks cracking under heat and pressure) and by space rocks striking the surface.
By observing how seismic waves from those quakes change as they travel through the planet’s crust, mantle, and core, scientists get a glimpse into Mars’ interior, as well as a better understanding of how all rocky worlds form, including Earth and its Moon.
A camera on the robotic arm of NASA’s InSight captured the lander setting down its Wind and Thermal Shield on Feb. 2, 2019. The shield covered InSight’s seismometer, which captured data from more than 1,300 marsquakes over the lander’s four-year mission. Researchers have in the past taken images of new impact craters and found seismic data that matches the date and location of the craters’ formation. But the two new studies represent the first time a fresh impact has been correlated with shaking detected in Cerberus Fossae, an especially quake-prone region of Mars that is 1,019 miles (1,640 kilometers) from InSight.
The impact crater is 71 feet (21.5 meters) in diameter and much farther from InSight than scientists expected, based on the quake’s seismic energy. The Martian crust has unique properties thought to dampen seismic waves produced by impacts, and researchers’ analysis of the Cerberus Fossae impact led them to conclude that the waves it produced took a more direct route through the planet’s mantle.
InSight’s team will now have to reassess their models of the composition and structure of Mars’ interior to explain how impact-generated seismic signals can go that deep.
“We used to think the energy detected from the vast majority of seismic events was stuck traveling within the Martian crust,” said InSight team member Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London. “This finding shows a deeper, faster path — call it a seismic highway — through the mantle, allowing quakes to reach more distant regions of the planet.”
Spotting Mars Craters With MRO
A machine learning algorithm developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to detect meteoroid impacts on Mars played a key role in discovering the Cerberus Fossae crater. In a matter of hours, the artificial intelligence tool can sift through tens of thousands of black-and-white images captured by MRO’s Context Camera, detecting the blast zones around craters. The tool selects candidate images for examination by scientists practiced at telling which subtle colorations on Mars deserve more detailed imaging by MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera.
“Done manually, this would be years of work,” said InSight team member Valentin Bickel of the University of Bern in Switzerland. “Using this tool, we went from tens of thousands of images to just a handful in a matter of days. It’s not quite as good as a human, but it’s super fast.”
Bickel and his colleagues searched for craters within roughly 1,864 miles (3,000 kilometers) of InSight’s location, hoping to find some that formed while the lander’s seismometer was recording. By comparing before-and-after images from the Context Camera over a range of time, they found 123 fresh craters to cross-reference with InSight’s data; 49 of those were potential matches with quakes detected by the lander’s seismometer. Charalambous and other seismologists filtered that pool further to identify the 71-foot Cerberus Fossae impact crater.
Deciphering More, Faster
The more scientists study InSight’s data, the better they become at distinguishing signals originating inside the planet from those caused by meteoroid strikes. The impact found in Cerberus Fossae will help them further refine how they tell these signals apart.
“We thought Cerberus Fossae produced lots of high-frequency seismic signals associated with internally generated quakes, but this suggests some of the activity does not originate there and could actually be from impacts instead,” Charalambous said.
The findings also highlight how researchers are harnessing AI to improve planetary science by making better use of all the data gathered by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) missions. In addition to studying Martian craters, Bickel has used AI to search for landslides, dust devils, and seasonal dark features that appear on steep slopes, called slope streaks or recurring slope linae. AI tools have been used to find craters and landslides on Earth’s Moon as well.
“Now we have so many images from the Moon and Mars that the struggle is to process and analyze the data,” Bickel said. “We’ve finally arrived in the big data era of planetary science.”
More About InSight
JPL managed InSight for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight was part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supported spacecraft operations for the mission.
A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), supported the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.
A division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado. The Context Camera was built by, and is operated by, Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.
For more about Insight, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/insight/
For more about MRO, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-reconnaissance-orbiter/
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
|karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
2025-013
Share
Details
Last Updated Feb 03, 2025 Related Terms
InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Explore More
5 min read 6 Things to Know About SPHEREx, NASA’s Newest Space Telescope
Article 3 days ago 5 min read NASA Juno Mission Spots Most Powerful Volcanic Activity on Io to Date
Article 6 days ago 5 min read NASA JPL Prepping for Full Year of Launches, Mission Milestones
Article 2 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
By NASA
Caption: Illustration of the four PUNCH spacecraft in low Earth orbit. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
NASA will hold a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Feb. 4, to share information about the agency’s upcoming PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which is targeted to launch no earlier than Thursday, Feb. 27.
The agency’s PUNCH mission is a constellation of four small satellites. When they arrive in low Earth orbit, the satellites will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, and help NASA learn how the mass and energy there become solar wind. By imaging the Sun’s corona and the solar wind together, scientists hope to better understand the entire inner heliosphere – Sun, solar wind, and Earth – as a single connected system.
Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency’s website at:
https://www.nasa.gov/live
Participants include:
Madhulika Guhathakurta, NASA program scientist, NASA Headquarters Nicholeen Viall, PUNCH mission scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Craig DeForest, PUNCH principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute To participate in the media teleconference, media must RSVP no later than 12 p.m. on Feb. 4 to: Abbey Interrante at: abbey.a.interrante@nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.
The PUNCH mission will share a ride to space with NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) space telescope on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, leads the PUNCH mission. The mission is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
To learn more about PUNCH, please visit:
https://nasa.gov/punch
-end-
Karen Fox
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.fox@nasa.gov
Sarah Frazier
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
202-853-7191
sarah.frazier@nasa.gov
View the full article
-
By NASA
Crews conduct a solar array deployment test on the spacecraft of NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) satellites at Astrotech Space Operations located inside Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025.USSF 30th Space Wing/Antonio Ramos Technicians supporting NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission deployed and tested the spacecraft’s solar arrays at the Astrotech Space Operations processing facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California ahead of its launch next month.
The arrays, essential for powering instruments and systems, mark another milestone in preparing PUNCH for its mission to study the Sun’s outer atmosphere as it transitions into the solar wind. Technicians performed the tests in a specialized cleanroom environment to prevent contamination and protect the sensitive equipment.
Comprised of four suitcase-sized satellites working together as a constellation, PUNCH will capture continuous 3D images of the Sun’s corona and the solar wind’s journey into the solar system. Led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) for NASA, the mission aims to deepen our understanding of the Sun and solar wind and how they affect humanity’s technology on Earth and our continued exploration of the solar system.
Successful solar array testing brings the spacecraft another step toward readiness for launch. The agency’s PUNCH mission is targeting liftoff as a rideshare with NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex 4E no earlier than Thursday, Feb. 27.
Image credit: USSF 30th Space Wing/Antonio Ramos
View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.