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By NASA
An unexpectedly strong solar storm rocked our planet on April 23, 2023, sparking auroras as far south as southern Texas in the U.S. and taking the world by surprise.
Two days earlier, the Sun blasted a coronal mass ejection (CME) — a cloud of energetic particles, magnetic fields, and solar material — toward Earth. Space scientists took notice, expecting it could cause disruptions to Earth’s magnetic field, known as a geomagnetic storm. But the CME wasn’t especially fast or massive, and it was preceded by a relatively weak solar flare, suggesting the storm would be minor. But it became severe.
Using NASA heliophysics missions, new studies of this storm and others are helping scientists learn why some CMEs have more intense effects — and better predict the impacts of future solar eruptions on our lives.
During the night of April 23 to 24, 2023, a geomagnetic storm produced auroras that were witnessed as far south as Arizona, Arkansas, and Texas in the U.S. This photo shows green aurora shimmering over Larimore, North Dakota, in the early morning of April 24. Copyright Elan Azriel, used with permission Why Was This Storm So Intense?
A paper published in the Astrophysical Journal on March 31 suggests the CME’s orientation relative to Earth likely caused the April 2023 storm to become surprisingly strong.
The researchers gathered observations from five heliophysics spacecraft across the inner solar system to study the CME in detail as it emerged from the Sun and traveled to Earth.
They noticed a large coronal hole near the CME’s birthplace. Coronal holes are areas where the solar wind — a stream of particles flowing from the Sun — floods outward at higher than normal speeds.
“The fast solar wind coming from this coronal hole acted like an air current, nudging the CME away from its original straight-line path and pushing it closer to Earth’s orbital plane,” said the paper’s lead author, Evangelos Paouris of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “In addition to this deflection, the CME also rotated slightly.”
Paouris says this turned the CME’s magnetic fields opposite to Earth’s magnetic field and held them there — allowing more of the Sun’s energy to pour into Earth’s environment and intensifying the storm.
The strength of the April 2023 geomagnetic storm was a surprise in part because the coronal mass ejection (CME) that produced it followed a relatively weak solar flare, seen as the bright area to the lower right of center in this extreme ultraviolet image of the Sun from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The CMEs that produce severe geomagnetic storms are typically preceded by stronger flares. However, a team of scientists think fast solar wind from a coronal hole (the dark area below the flare in this image) helped rotate the CME and made it more potent when it struck Earth. NASA/SDO Cool Thermosphere
Meanwhile, NASA’s GOLD (Global-scale Observations of Limb and Disk) mission revealed another unexpected consequence of the April 2023 storm at Earth.
Before, during, and after the storm, GOLD studied the temperature in the middle thermosphere, a part of Earth’s upper atmosphere about 85 to 120 miles overhead. During the storm, temperatures increased throughout GOLD’s wide field of view over the Americas. But surprisingly, after the storm, temperatures dropped about 90 to 198 degrees Fahrenheit lower than they were before the storm (from about 980 to 1,070 degrees Fahrenheit before the storm to 870 to 980 degrees Fahrenheit afterward).
“Our measurement is the first to show widespread cooling in the middle thermosphere after a strong storm,” said Xuguang Cai of the University of Colorado, Boulder, lead author of a paper about GOLD’s observations published in the journal JGR Space Physics on April 15, 2025.
The thermosphere’s temperature is important, because it affects how much drag Earth-orbiting satellites and space debris experience.
“When the thermosphere cools, it contracts and becomes less dense at satellite altitudes, reducing drag,” Cai said. “This can cause satellites and space debris to stay in orbit longer than expected, increasing the risk of collisions. Understanding how geomagnetic storms and solar activity affect Earth’s upper atmosphere helps protect technologies we all rely on — like GPS, satellites, and radio communications.”
Predicting When Storms Strike
To predict when a CME will trigger a geomagnetic storm, or be “geoeffective,” some scientists are combining observations with machine learning. A paper published last November in the journal Solar Physics describes one such approach called GeoCME.
Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence in which a computer algorithm learns from data to identify patterns, then uses those patterns to make decisions or predictions.
Scientists trained GeoCME by giving it images from the NASA/ESA (European Space Agency) SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft of different CMEs that reached Earth along with SOHO images of the Sun before, during, and after each CME. They then told the model whether each CME produced a geomagnetic storm.
Then, when it was given images from three different science instruments on SOHO, the model’s predictions were highly accurate. Out of 21 geoeffective CMEs, the model correctly predicted all 21 of them; of 7 non-geoeffective ones, it correctly predicted 5 of them.
“The algorithm shows promise,” said heliophysicist Jack Ireland of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was not involved in the study. “Understanding if a CME will be geoeffective or not can help us protect infrastructure in space and technological systems on Earth. This paper shows machine learning approaches to predicting geoeffective CMEs are feasible.”
The white cloud expanding outward in this image sequence is a coronal mass ejection (CME) that erupted from the Sun on April 21, 2023. Two days later, the CME struck Earth and produced a surprisingly strong geomagnetic storm. The images in this sequence are from a coronagraph on the NASA/ESA (European Space Agency) SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft. The coronagraph uses a disk to cover the Sun and reveal fainter details around it. The Sun’s location and size are indicated by a small white circle. The planet Jupiter appears as a bright dot on the far right. NASA/ESA/SOHO Earlier Warnings
During a severe geomagnetic storm in May 2024 — the strongest to rattle Earth in over 20 years — NASA’s STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) measured the magnetic field structure of CMEs as they passed by.
When a CME headed for Earth hits a spacecraft first, that spacecraft can often measure the CME and its magnetic field directly, helping scientists determine how strong the geomagnetic storm will be at Earth. Typically, the first spacecraft to get hit are one million miles from Earth toward the Sun at a place called Lagrange Point 1 (L1), giving us only 10 to 60 minutes advanced warning.
By chance, during the May 2024 storm, when several CMEs erupted from the Sun and merged on their way to Earth, NASA’s STEREO-A spacecraft happened to be between us and the Sun, about 4 million miles closer to the Sun than L1.
A paper published March 17, 2025, in the journal Space Weather reports that if STEREO-A had served as a CME sentinel, it could have provided an accurate prediction of the resulting storm’s strength 2 hours and 34 minutes earlier than a spacecraft could at L1.
According to the paper’s lead author, Eva Weiler of the Austrian Space Weather Office in Graz, “No other Earth-directed superstorm has ever been observed by a spacecraft positioned closer to the Sun than L1.”
Earth’s Lagrange points are places in space where the gravitational pull between the Sun and Earth balance, making them relatively stable locations to put spacecraft. NASA By Vanessa Thomas
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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By NASA
Credit: NASA/Krystofer Kim Read this release in English here.
La NASA estrenó el martes el primer episodio de la tercera temporada de Universo curioso de la NASA, el único pódcast en español de la agencia.
Los episodios se centran en algunas de las principales misiones y temas de investigación de la NASA para 2025, llevando la maravilla de la exploración, la tecnología espacial y los descubrimientos científicos al público de habla hispana de todo el mundo.
“La ciencia de la NASA está literalmente en todas partes, y trasciende la geografía y los idiomas para ofrecer beneficios, en tiempo real, en la vida cotidiana de las personas de todo el mundo que utilizan nuestras innovaciones, datos y descubrimientos científicos alcanzados desde el punto de vista único del espacio”, dijo la doctora Nicky Fox, administradora asociada de la Dirección de Misiones Científicas, en la sede central de la NASA en Washington. “El pódcast Universo curioso de la NASA comparte los descubrimientos de la NASA con las comunidades de habla hispana de todo el mundo, inspirando a futuros exploradores a unirse a nuestro viaje mientras regresamos a la Luna y nos aventuramos hacia Marte en beneficio de toda la humanidad”.
Todos los meses se presentarán nuevos episodios hasta el final del año. El primer episodio, centrado en los objetivos científicos de la misión a la Luna Artemis II de la NASA, está disponible en:
https://go.nasa.gov/4l9lmbN
Universo curioso es presentado por Noelia González, especialista en comunicaciones en el Centro de Vuelo Espacial Goddard de la NASA en Greenbelt, Maryland. Esta temporada tendrá al coanfitrión Andrés Almeida, escritor técnico y anfitrión del pódcast de la NASA Small Steps, Giant Leaps (Pasos pequeños, grandes saltos) en la sede central de la NASA. A lo largo de la temporada, los oyentes celebrarán el legado del telescopio espacial Hubble de la NASA, aprenderán sobre una próxima misión al Sol y explorarán la energía oscura y cómo la estudiará el futuro telescopio espacial Roman, entre otros temas.
Universo curioso de la NASA es una iniciativa conjunta de los programas de comunicaciones en español y audio de la agencia. La nueva temporada, así como los episodios anteriores, están disponibles en Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud y el sitio web de la NASA.
Escucha el pódcast y descarga materiales de arte relacionados en el sitio web:
https://ciencia.nasa.gov/universocurioso
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Last Updated Jul 01, 2025 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
NASA en español Podcasts View the full article
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By NASA
Credit: NASA/Krystofer Kim Lee esta nota en español aquí.
NASA released the first episode Tuesday of its third season of Universo curioso de la NASA, the agency’s only Spanish-language podcast.
Episodes focus on some of NASA’s top missions and research topics for 2025, bringing the wonder of exploration, space technology, and scientific discoveries to Spanish-speaking audiences around the world.
“NASA Science is literally everywhere, transcending geography and language to provide real time benefits to everyday lives across the globe using our scientific innovations, data, and discoveries from the unique vantage point of space,” said Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The Universo curioso de la NASA podcast shares NASA’s discoveries with Spanish-speaking communities across the globe, inspiring future explorers to join our journey as we return to the Moon and venture onward to Mars for the benefit of all humanity.”
New episodes will post every month through the end of the year. The first episode, centered on the science objectives of NASA’s Artemis II mission to the Moon, is available at:
https://go.nasa.gov/4l9lmbN
Universo curioso is hosted by Noelia González, communications specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This season introduces co-host Andrés Almeida, technical writer and host of NASA’s Small Steps, Giant Leaps podcast at NASA’s Headquarters. Throughout the season, listeners will celebrate the legacy of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, learn about an upcoming mission to the Sun, and explore dark energy and how the future Roman Space Telescope will study it, among other topics.
Universo curioso de la NASA is a joint initiative of the agency’s Spanish-language communications and audio programs. The new season, as well as previous episodes, are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud and NASA’s website.
Listen to the podcast and download related art materials at:
https://ciencia.nasa.gov/universocurioso
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Last Updated Jul 01, 2025 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Podcasts General View the full article
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By NASA
7 min read
A New Alloy is Enabling Ultra-Stable Structures Needed for Exoplanet Discovery
A unique new material that shrinks when it is heated and expands when it is cooled could help enable the ultra-stable space telescopes that future NASA missions require to search for habitable worlds.
Advancements in material technologies are needed to meet the science needs of the next great observatories. These observatories will strive to find, identify, and study exoplanets and their ability to support life. Credit: NASA JPL One of the goals of NASA’s Astrophysics Division is to determine whether we are alone in the universe. NASA’s astrophysics missions seek to answer this question by identifying planets beyond our solar system (exoplanets) that could support life. Over the last two decades, scientists have developed ways to detect atmospheres on exoplanets by closely observing stars through advanced telescopes. As light passes through a planet’s atmosphere or is reflected or emitted from a planet’s surface, telescopes can measure the intensity and spectra (i.e., “color”) of the light, and can detect various shifts in the light caused by gases in the planetary atmosphere. By analyzing these patterns, scientists can determine the types of gasses in the exoplanet’s atmosphere.
Decoding these shifts is no easy task because the exoplanets appear very near their host stars when we observe them, and the starlight is one billion times brighter than the light from an Earth-size exoplanet. To successfully detect habitable exoplanets, NASA’s future Habitable Worlds Observatory will need a contrast ratio of one to one billion (1:1,000,000,000).
Achieving this extreme contrast ratio will require a telescope that is 1,000 times more stable than state-of-the-art space-based observatories like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and its forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. New sensors, system architectures, and materials must be integrated and work in concert for future mission success. A team from the company ALLVAR is collaborating with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to demonstrate how integration of a new material with unique negative thermal expansion characteristics can help enable ultra-stable telescope structures.
Material stability has always been a limiting factor for observing celestial phenomena. For decades, scientists and engineers have been working to overcome challenges such as micro-creep, thermal expansion, and moisture expansion that detrimentally affect telescope stability. The materials currently used for telescope mirrors and struts have drastically improved the dimensional stability of the great observatories like Webb and Roman, but as indicated in the Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020 developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, they still fall short of the 10 picometer level stability over several hours that will be required for the Habitable Worlds Observatory. For perspective, 10 picometers is roughly 1/10th the diameter of an atom.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope sits atop the support structure and instrument payloads. The long black struts holding the telescope’s secondary mirror will contribute roughly 30% of the wave front error while the larger support structure underneath the primary mirror will contribute another 30%.
Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
Funding from NASA and other sources has enabled this material to transition from the laboratory to the commercial scale. ALLVAR received NASA Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) funding to scale and integrate a new alloy material into telescope structure demonstrations for potential use on future NASA missions like the Habitable Worlds Observatory. This alloy shrinks when heated and expands when cooled—a property known as negative thermal expansion (NTE). For example, ALLVAR Alloy 30 exhibits a -30 ppm/°C coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) at room temperature. This means that a 1-meter long piece of this NTE alloy will shrink 0.003 mm for every 1 °C increase in temperature. For comparison, aluminum expands at +23 ppm/°C.
While other materials expand while heated and contract when cooled, ALLVAR Alloy 30 exhibits a negative thermal expansion, which can compensate for the thermal expansion mismatch of other materials. The thermal strain versus temperature is shown for 6061 Aluminum, A286 Stainless Steel, Titanium 6Al-4V, Invar 36, and ALLVAR Alloy 30.
Because it shrinks when other materials expand, ALLVAR Alloy 30 can be used to strategically compensate for the expansion and contraction of other materials. The alloy’s unique NTE property and lack of moisture expansion could enable optic designers to address the stability needs of future telescope structures. Calculations have indicated that integrating ALLVAR Alloy 30 into certain telescope designs could improve thermal stability up to 200 times compared to only using traditional materials like aluminum, titanium, Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRPs), and the nickel–iron alloy, Invar.
The hexapod assembly with six ALLVAR Alloy struts was measured for long-term stability. The stability of the individual struts and the hexapod assembly were measured using interferometry at the University of Florida’s Institute for High Energy Physics and Astrophysics. The struts were found to have a length noise well below the proposed target for the success criteria for the project. Credit: (left) ALLVAR and (right) Simon F. Barke, Ph.D. To demonstrate that negative thermal expansion alloys can enable ultra-stable structures, the ALLVAR team developed a hexapod structure to separate two mirrors made of a commercially available glass ceramic material with ultra-low thermal expansion properties. Invar was bonded to the mirrors and flexures made of Ti6Al4V—a titanium alloy commonly used in aerospace applications—were attached to the Invar. To compensate for the positive CTEs of the Invar and Ti6Al4V components, an NTE ALLVAR Alloy 30 tube was used between the Ti6Al4V flexures to create the struts separating the two mirrors. The natural positive thermal expansion of the Invar and Ti6Al4V components is offset by the negative thermal expansion of the NTE alloy struts, resulting in a structure with an effective zero thermal expansion.
The stability of the structure was evaluated at the University of Florida Institute for High Energy Physics and Astrophysics. The hexapod structure exhibited stability well below the 100 pm/√Hz target and achieved 11 pm/√Hz. This first iteration is close to the 10 pm stability required for the future Habitable Worlds Observatory. A paper and presentation made at the August 2021 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers conference provides details about this analysis.
Furthermore, a series of tests run by NASA Marshall showed that the ultra-stable struts were able to achieve a near-zero thermal expansion that matched the mirrors in the above analysis. This result translates into less than a 5 nm root mean square (rms) change in the mirror’s shape across a 28K temperature change.
The ALLVAR enabled Ultra-Stable Hexapod Assembly undergoing Interferometric Testing between 293K and 265K (right). On the left, the Root Mean Square (RMS) changes in the mirror’s surface shape are visually represented. The three roughly circular red areas are caused by the thermal expansion mismatch of the invar bonding pads with the ZERODUR mirror, while the blue and green sections show little to no changes caused by thermal expansion. The surface diagram shows a less than 5 nanometer RMS change in mirror figure. Credit: NASA’s X-Ray and Cryogenic Facility [XRCF] Beyond ultra-stable structures, the NTE alloy technology has enabled enhanced passive thermal switch performance and has been used to remove the detrimental effects of temperature changes on bolted joints and infrared optics. These applications could impact technologies used in other NASA missions. For example, these new alloys have been integrated into the cryogenic sub-assembly of Roman’s coronagraph technology demonstration. The addition of NTE washers enabled the use of pyrolytic graphite thermal straps for more efficient heat transfer. ALLVAR Alloy 30 is also being used in a high-performance passive thermal switch incorporated into the UC Berkeley Space Science Laboratory’s Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE Night) project aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 2, which will be delivered to the Moon through NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. The NTE alloys enabled smaller thermal switch size and greater on-off heat conduction ratios for LuSEE Night.
Through another recent NASA SBIR effort, the ALLVAR team worked with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop detailed datasets of ALLVAR Alloy 30 material properties. These large datasets include statistically significant material properties such as strength, elastic modulus, fatigue, and thermal conductivity. The team also collected information about less common properties like micro-creep and micro-yield. With these properties characterized, ALLVAR Alloy 30 has cleared a major hurdle towards space-material qualification.
As a spinoff of this NASA-funded work, the team is developing a new alloy with tunable thermal expansion properties that can match other materials or even achieve zero CTE. Thermal expansion mismatch causes dimensional stability and force-load issues that can impact fields such as nuclear engineering, quantum computing, aerospace and defense, optics, fundamental physics, and medical imaging. The potential uses for this new material will likely extend far beyond astronomy. For example, ALLVAR developed washers and spacers, are now commercially available to maintain consistent preloads across extreme temperature ranges in both space and terrestrial environments. These washers and spacers excel at counteracting the thermal expansion and contraction of other materials, ensuring stability for demanding applications.
For additional details, see the entry for this project on NASA TechPort.
Project Lead: Dr. James A. Monroe, ALLVAR
The following NASA organizations sponsored this effort: NASA Astrophysics Division, NASA SBIR Program funded by the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD).
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Last Updated Jul 01, 2025 Related Terms
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By USH
In 1992, Dr. Gregory Rogers a NASA flight surgeon and former Chief of Aerospace Medicine witnessed an event that would stay with him for more than three decades. Now, after years of silence, he’s finally revealing the details of a 15-minute encounter that shattered everything he thought he knew about aerospace technology.
With a distinguished career that includes support for 31 space shuttle launches, training as an F-16 pilot, and deep involvement in classified aerospace programs, Dr. Rogers brings unmatched credibility to the conversation. His firsthand account of observing what appeared to be a reverse-engineered craft, emblazoned with "U.S. Air Force" markings, raises profound questions about the true timeline of UAP development and disclosure.
The full interview spans nearly two hours. To help navigate the discussion, here’s a timeline so you can jump to the segments that interest you most.
00:00 Introduction and Dr. Rogers' Unprecedented Credentials 07:25 The 1992 Cape Canaveral Encounter Begins 18:45 Inside the Hangar: First Glimpse of the Craft 26:30 "We Got It From Them" - The Shocking Revelation 35:15 Technical Analysis: Impossible Flight Characteristics 43:40 Electromagnetic Discharges and Advanced Propulsion 52:20 The Cover Story and 33 Years of Silence 1:01:10 Why He's Speaking Out Now: Grush and Fravor's Influence 1:08:45 Bob Lazar Connections and Reverse Engineering Timeline 1:17:20 Flight Surgeon Stories: The Human Side of Classified Work 1:25:50 G-Force Brain Injuries: An Unreported Military Crisis 1:34:30 Columbia Disaster: When Safety Warnings Are Ignored 1:43:15 The Bureaucratic Resistance to Truth 1:50:40 Congressional Testimony and The Path Forward 1:58:25 Final Thoughts: Legacy vs. Truth
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