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Statement from NASA’s Janet Petro on Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request
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By NASA
Explore This Section Science Uncategorized Helio Highlights: June… Home Framework for Heliophysics Education About Helio Big Idea 1.1 Helio Big Idea 1.2 Helio Big Idea 1.3 Helio Big Idea 2.1 Helio Big Idea 2.2 Helio Big Idea 2.3 Helio Big Idea 3.1 Helio Big Idea 3.2 Helio Big Idea 3.3 Helio Missions Helio Topics Resource Database About NASA HEAT More Highlights Space Math 4 min read
Helio Highlights: June 2025
4 Min Read Helio Highlights: June 2025
An artist’s interpretation of the Parker Solar Probe flying through the corona. Credits:
NASA Two Stars in Solar Science
It takes a lot of work to make space missions happen. Hundreds or even thousands of experts work as a team to put together the spacecraft. Then it has to be tested in conditions similar to space, to be sure that it can survive out there once it is launched. Fixing big issues that pop up after launch is either impossible or very difficult, so it is important that everything works before the mission gets to space.
The Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter missions study the Sun from different points of view. Parker is led by NASA and was built to fly into the upper atmosphere of the Sun, called the corona. Solar Orbiter is led by the European Space Agency (ESA) and has gotten our first peek at the Sun’s poles. Together, they both provide a deeper understanding of the Sun and how it affects the rest of the solar system.
A New Way of Seeing
It takes a lot of teamwork to build and launch any space mission, and Solar Orbiter was no different. It also had to go through a lot of testing in conditions similar to outer space before it made its final journey to the launch site.
The Solar Orbiter mission has taken the highest-ever-resolution images of the Sun and recently sent back the first ever close-up images of the Sun’s poles. It has also studied the solar wind to see what it is made of and helped scientists find out where on the Sun the solar wind comes from. Working hand-in-hand with Parker, it has also shown how the solar wind gets a magnetic “push” that increases its total speed.
An infographic showing the ten scientific instruments carried aboard Solar Orbiter European Space Agency To get all of this done, the spacecraft carries ten different scientific instruments on its voyage around the Sun. These instruments work together to provide a total overview of our star. Six of them are remote-sensing instruments (above in gold), which “see” the Sun and return imagery to Earth. The other four are what’s called in-situ instruments (above in pink), which measure the environment all around the spacecraft. This includes the solar wind, and the electric and magnetic fields embedded within it.
Faster and Closer Than Ever Before
The Parker Solar Probe was named for Dr. Eugene N. Parker, who pioneered our modern understanding of the Sun. In the mid-1950s, Parker developed a theory that predicted the solar wind. The probe named after him is designed to swoop within 4 million miles (6.5 million kilometers) of the Sun’s surface to trace its energy flow, to study the heating of the corona, and to explore what accelerates the solar wind.
To get all this done, the probe has to survive the blazing hot corona. It can get up to about 2 million °F (1.1 million °C)! Parker uses high-tech thermal engineering to protect itself, including an eight-foot diameter heat shield called the Thermal Protection System (TPS). The TPS is made of two panels of carbon composite with a lightweight 4.5-inch-thick carbon foam core. This heat shield sandwich keeps things about 85 °F (29 °C) in its shadow, even though the Sun-facing side reaches about 2,500 °F (1,377 °C)!
In 2018, the Parker Solar Probe became the fastest spacecraft ever built, at about 430,000 miles per hour (700,000 kilometers per hour). It also got seven times closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft, getting within 3.8 million miles (6.2 million kilometers). It made this record-breaking close encounter on Christmas Eve of 2024.
From Yesterday to Tomorrow
The Parker Solar Probe was launched on August 12, 2018, and Solar Orbiter was launched on February 10, 2020. Both of them took off from Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida. Some pieces of Solar Orbiter were transported in trucks, but the completed spacecraft made the journey from Europe to the U.S. on a gigantic Antonov cargo plane designed especially for transporting spacecraft.
Together, these spacecraft have done a lot to improve our knowledge of the Sun. Both missions are currently in their main operational phase, with projected end-of-mission sometime in 2026, and could continue returning data for a few years to come.
Here are more resources about these missions
Lesson Plans & Educator Guides
NASA Helio Club
Lesson Plan
A collection of six lessons created for a middle-school audience that introduce basic heliophysics concepts.
Interactive Resources
Build A Model Solar
Probe Activity
A hands-on guide showing students how to construct a homemade model of the Parker Solar Probe.
Webinars & Slide Decks
Parker’s Perihelion
The Parker Solar Probe mission is the first spacecraft to “touch” the Sun, and made its closest approach in late 2024.
How will Parker Solar Probe study the Sun?
A slide deck with resources explaining how the Parker Solar Probe can study the Sun and survive.
Exploring the Sun with Solar Orbiter Video
A video conversation about the Solar Orbiter mission with NASA scientist Dr. Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla.
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By Amazing Space
Massive Solar Prominence "The Beast" Threatens Eruption? Space Weather Update July 14 2025 NASA SDO
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By European Space Agency
Week in images: 07-11 July 2025
Discover our week through the lens
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By European Space Agency
The Council of the European Space Agency has received the Anniversary Statement as signed by Member States marking 50 years of the agency.
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By NASA
Explore This Section Science Uncategorized Helio Highlights: May… Home Framework for Heliophysics Education About Helio Big Idea 1.1 Helio Big Idea 1.2 Helio Big Idea 1.3 Helio Big Idea 2.1 Helio Big Idea 2.2 Helio Big Idea 2.3 Helio Big Idea 3.1 Helio Big Idea 3.2 Helio Big Idea 3.3 Helio Missions Helio Topics Resource Database About NASA HEAT More Highlights Space Math 3 min read
Helio Highlights: May 2025
3 Min Read Helio Highlights: May 2025
A satellite image showing the extent of the Northern Lights during part of the Mother’s Day 2024 solar storms. Credits:
NOAA One year ago, solar storms lit up the night sky. Why?
The Sun is 93 million miles away from Earth, on average. Even though it’s far away, we can still see and feel its effects here. One of the most beautiful effects are the auroras – colorful lights that dance across the sky near the North and South Poles. These are also called the Northern and Southern Lights. They happen when tiny particles from the Sun hit gas molecules in our atmosphere and give off energy.
Sometimes the Sun becomes very active and sends out a lot more energy than normal. When this happens, we can see auroras in places much farther from the poles than normal. In May 2024, around Mother’s Day, the Sun sent powerful solar storms in the direction of Earth. These storms were also called the Gannon Storms, named after Jennifer Gannon, a scientist who studied space weather. The Northern Lights could be seen as far south as Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Mexico, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. The Southern Lights were also visible as far north as South Africa and New Zealand.
Aurora Borealis seen from British Columbia, Canada on May 10, 2024. NASA/Mara Johnson-Groh Scientists who study the Sun and its effects on our solar system work in a field called heliophysics. Their studies of the Sun have shown that it goes through cycles of being more active and less active. Each one of these cycles lasts about 11 years, but can be anywhere from 8 to 14 years long. This is called the Solar Cycle.
The middle of each cycle is called Solar Maximum. During this time, the Sun has more dark spots (called sunspots) and creates more space weather events. The big storms in May 2024 happened during the Solar Maximum for Solar Cycle 25.
On May 8 and 9, 2024, an active area on the Sun called AR3664 shot out powerful solar flares and several huge bursts of energy called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These CMEs headed straight for Earth. The first CME pushed aside the normal solar wind, making a clear path for the others to reach us faster. When all this energy hit our atmosphere, it created auroras much farther from the poles than usual. It was like the Sun gave the auroras a huge power boost!
Eruptions of Solar material into space as seen on May 7 (right) and May 8 (left), 2024. These types of eruptions often come just before a larger Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), including the ones which caused the Mother’s Day solar storms. NASA/SDO Auroras are beautiful to watch, but the space weather that creates them can also cause problems. Space weather can mess up radio signals, power grids, GPS systems, and satellites. During the May 2024 storms, GPS systems used by farmers were disrupted. Many farmers use GPS to guide their self-driving tractors. Since this happened during peak planting season, it may have cost billions of dollars in lost profit.
Because space weather can cause so many problems, scientists at NASA and around the world watch the Sun closely to predict when these events will happen. You can help too! Join local science projects at schools, teach others about the Sun, and help make observations in your area. All of this helps us to learn more about the Sun and how it affects our planet.
Here are some resources to connect you to the Sun and auroras
Lesson Plans & Educator Guides
Magnetic Mysteries: Sun-Earth Interactions
A 5E lesson for high school students to investigate the question of what causes aurora by using Helioviewer to examine solar activity.
Aurora Research and Heliophysics
Learn about aurora, how they form, and the different phases they go through, as well as heliophysics missions that study them.
How Earth’s Magnetic Field Causes Auroras
A 5E middle school lesson where students explore why our planet has a magnetic field (and other planets don’t) and what it is like.
Interactive Resources
Magnetic Earth
Introductory activity where users learn about the magnetic field that surrounds Earth and its role in creating the Northern Lights.
NOAA Aurora
30-Minute Forecast
An interactive aurora map for both hemispheres which allows users to predict the likelihood of auroras at different latitudes.
Webinars and Slide Decks
Space Weather
Basics
A slide deck (41 slides) that offers an elementary introduction to the basic features of space weather and its interactions with Earth’s magnetosphere and various technologies.
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