The solar wind is created by the outward expansion of plasma (a collection of charged particles) from the Sun's corona (outermost atmosphere). This plasma is continually heated to the point that the Sun's gravity can't hold it down. It then travels along the Sun's magnetic field lines that extend radially outward. As the Sun rotates (once every 27 days), it winds up its magnetic field lines above its polar regions into a large rotating spiral, creating a constant stream of "wind."

Such emissions, or streamers, are thought to come from large bright patches called "coronal holes" in the Sun's corona, as seen in the image above. The magnetic field lines of these coronal holes extend outwards, their ends dragged by the solar wind. They extend so far that they form an interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), which surrounds all the planets in our solar system!

Above the Sun's active sunspot regions (dark areas caused by magnetic disturbances) on the surface, or photospheric layer, loops of magnetic field lines trap some plasma and hold it back.

Projecting outward, the solar wind forms an immense "bubble" around the Sun, called the heliosphere. This bubble extends far beyond the orbit of most planets in our solar system.

When the solar wind plasma leaves the Sun's corona, it carries with it some of that yellow star's magnetic field. This extension of the Sun's magnetic field into space greatly influences the manner in which the solar wind interacts with planets and, eventually, the interstellar medium.

When the solar wind encounters Earth, it is deflected by our planet's magnetic shield, causing most of the solar wind's energetic particles to flow around and beyond us. This region that meets and blocks the solar wind is called the magnetosphere. The space around our atmosphere is alive and dynamic because Earth's magnetosphere reacts to the Sun's activity.

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March 11, 2021

The solar wind, explained

by Louise Lerner, University of Chicago

The solar wind, explained

The solar wind is a flow of particles that comes off the sun at about one million miles per hour and travels throughout the entire solar system. First proposed in the 1950s by University of Chicago physicist Eugene Parker, the solar wind is visible in the halo around the sun during an eclipse and sometimes when the particles hit the Earth's atmosphere—as the aurora borealis, or northern lights.

While the solar wind protects Earth from other harmful particles coming from space, storms can also threaten our satellite and communications networks.

What is the solar wind?

The surface of the sun is blisteringly hot at 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit—but its atmosphere, called the corona, is more than a thousand times hotter. It is also incredibly active; those flares and loops are the halo you see around the sun when there's an eclipse.

The corona is so hot that the sun's gravity can't hold it, so particles are flung off into space and travel throughout the solar system in every direction. As the sun spins, burns and burps, it creates complex swirls and eddies of particles. These particles, mostly protons and electrons, are traveling about a million miles per hour as they pass Earth.

This flow of particles, called the "solar wind," has an enormous impact on our lives. It protects us from stray cosmic rays coming from elsewhere in the galaxy—but the effects of storms on the sun's surface can also affect our telecommunications networks. The wind would also pose a threat to astronauts traveling through space, so NASA wants to get a better understanding of its properties.

How was the solar wind discovered?

In 1957, Eugene Parker was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago when he began looking into an open question in astrophysics: Are particles coming off of the sun? Such a phenomenon seemed unlikely; Earth's atmosphere doesn't flow out into space, and many experts presumed the same would be true for the sun. But scientists had noticed an odd phenomenon: The tails of comets, no matter which direction they traveled, always pointed away from the sun—almost as though something was blowing them away.

Parker began to do the math. He calculated that if the sun's corona was a million degrees, there had to be a flow of particles expanding away from its surface, eventually becoming extremely fast—faster than the speed of sound. He would later name the phenomenon the "solar wind."

"And that's the end of the story, except it isn't, because people immediately said, "I don't believe it,'" Parker said.

He wrote a paper and submitted it to the Astrophysical Journal ; the response from scientific reviewers was swift and scathing.

"You must understand how unbelievable this sounded when he proposed it," said Fausto Cattaneo, a UChicago professor of astronomy and astrophysics. "That this wind not only exists, but is traveling at supersonic speed! It is extraordinarily difficult to accelerate anything to supersonic speeds in the laboratory, and there is no means of propulsion."

Luckily, the editor of the journal at the time was eminent astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Parker's colleague at the University of Chicago. Chandrasekhar didn't like the idea either, but the future Nobel laureate couldn't find anything wrong with Parker's math, so he overruled the reviewers and published the paper.

Only three years later, when a NASA spacecraft called Mariner II took readings on its journey to Venus in 1962, the results were unambiguous. "There was the solar wind, blowing 24/7," Parker said.

How does the solar wind effect us?

The breakthrough discovery reshaped our picture of space and the solar system. Scientists came to understand that the solar wind not only flows past Earth, but throughout the solar system and beyond. It also both protects and threatens us.

"The solar wind magnetically blankets the solar system, protecting life on Earth from even higher-energy particles coming from elsewhere in the galaxy," explained UChicago astrophysicist Angela Olinto. "But it also affects the sophisticated satellite communications we have today. So understanding the precise structure and dynamics and evolution of the solar wind is crucial for civilization as a whole."

Normally, Earth's magnetic field shields us from most of these particles. But sometimes, the sun "burps," throwing a billion tons of material into space flying at several thousand kilometers per second. These are called coronal mass ejections—and if a big one happened to hit Earth, the shockwave could cause chaos and damage to our communication systems. "It can cause the magnetic field that surrounds Earth to ring like a struck bell," said Prof. Justin Kasper, a UChicago alum now a physicist at the University of Michigan. Such a scenario would generate all kinds of disturbances: Aircraft would lose radio communication, GPS would be thrown off by up to miles, and banking, communications and electronic systems could be knocked out.

This has actually happened before: In 1859, a giant solar eruption known as the Carrington Event shut down telegraph and electrical systems for days. The aurora borealis was so strong that people reported being able to read a newspaper by its light even at one o'clock in the morning. "There was a ghastly splendor over the horizon of the North, from which fantastic spires of light shot up, and a rosy glow extended, like a vapor tinged with fire, to the zenith," wrote the Cincinnati Daily Commercial.

But in 1859, we weren't as reliant on electronics as we are today. A 2013 study by Lloyd's of London estimated that a similar storm hitting Earth today could cause up to $2.6 trillion in damages to the United States alone, and would trigger widespread blackouts and damages to electrical grids.

There are some precautions we could take if we had advance notice, which is why engineers want to know when a solar storm is incoming. Luckily, several spacecraft orbiting the sun take pictures and send them back to Earth so that NASA can monitor for eruptions. ( You can see current space weather conditions here.) But analyzing these images still requires an eruption to first show up on the sun's surface, which only provides minutes or hours of warning. As of now, there still isn't way to predict such eruptions before they happen.

A better understanding of the solar wind also factors into another human venture: space travel. Some solar wind particles are extremely energetic, and could poke tiny holes through important spacecraft equipment—not to mention human bodies. In order to protect astronauts, NASA needs to understand the components, characteristics, and frequencies of such particles, as well as how to forecast space weather in advance for safe journeys.

What mysteries remain about the solar wind?

The solar wind, explained

One of the biggest problems facing space weather forecasters is that we still don't know why the atmosphere of the sun is so much hotter than the surface.

In everyday life, you'd expect the temperature to decrease steadily as you get further away from a heat source , like moving your hand away from a fire. But that's not what happens on the sun. In this case, the heat comes from fusion happening in the sun's core, which gradually cools to 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the surface—then shoots up again to millions of degrees in the corona.

Many theories have been proposed. Scientists know that the entire surface of the sun is constantly churning and erupting; perhaps there are smaller "nanoflares" (each still packing the energy of a 10-megaton hydrogen bomb) constantly erupting all over the sun's surface that carry heat to the atmosphere. There are also magnetic fields interacting at the sun's surface; it's possible these magnetic fields are hitting each other with explosive force billions of times per second—"canceling" each other out, but heating the atmosphere in the process.

Questions that scientists would like to answer include:

  • Why is the corona so much hotter than the surface of the sun? How does the solar wind accelerate away from the sun?
  • How fast are the particles moving, and how hot are they getting?
  • Are magnetic fields heating the particles, or are there mechanical waves coming from the surface of the sun? (or both?)

A deeper understanding of these processes could help forecast space weather that affects life on Earth, reveal more about the conditions that astronauts in orbit above our world and journeying for long distances would face, and even provide clues about what kinds of star activity might favor habitability on distant planets.

But to get answers, we need to get close to the sun itself.

What is NASA's Parker Probe?

The solar wind, explained

Scientists have been eager for a mission to the sun since space travel first became possible. Not only is the sun vital to life on Earth, it is also by far the closest star we can study. But the extreme temperatures meant that scientists needed to wait for the development of technology that could shield the spacecraft from the intense heat and radiation of the sun.

In 2018, this dream finally came true. NASA's Parker Solar Probe—named for Eugene Parker in honor of his pioneering research—began a seven-year journey to the blisteringly hot corona of the sun on Aug. 12, 2018. The probe is the fastest-moving object built by humans, traveling at more than 150,000 miles per hour. It's so fast that it's already made several trips around the sun.

The probe's heat shield, made of just under five inches of a cutting-edge carbon composite, keeps the craft's delicate instruments at a cool 85 degrees Fahrenheit, even as the corona rages at 3,000,000 degrees outside. (Except for one especially tough instrument, built by UChicago alum Justin Kasper, which peeks around the edge of the craft to scoop up particles of the solar wind ).

The probe has already sent huge amounts of data back to Earth, which led to discoveries such as bizarre "switchbacks" in the solar wind .

Parker, then 91, flew to Cape Canaveral with his family to watch the NASA spacecraft launch.

"So much has gone into this launch, and then to see it all disappear slowly—fading away into the night sky, knowing it will never come back—it was a moving experience," Parker said. "You rarely have a space mission that doesn't come up with the unexpected, and it's actually going to get more exciting as the mission goes on and crosses into regions that spacecraft have never been in before. It's just fascinating every step of the way."

Journal information: Astrophysical Journal

Provided by University of Chicago

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solar wind space travel

Solar sails are made of ultrathin, highly reflective material. When a photon from the sun hits the mirror-like surface, it bounces off the sail and transfers its momentum.

New NASA Spacecraft Will Be Propelled By Light

Solar sails could travel to the outermost regions of the solar system faster than ever before.

In 1418, European sailing vessels left their ports to explore the Atlantic Ocean, initiating a great Age of Discovery.  

In 2018, a small space probe will unfurl a sail and begin a journey to a distant asteroid. It’s the first NASA spacecraft that will venture beyond Earth’s orbit propelled entirely by sunlight. This technology could enable inexpensive exploration of the solar system and, eventually, interstellar space.

The $16 million probe, called the Near-Earth Asteroid Scout , is one of the 13 science payloads that NASA announced Tuesday . They will hitch a ride on the inaugural flight of the Space Launch System—the megarocket designed to replace the space shuttle and, one day, send the Orion spacecraft to Mars.  

It will take 2.5 years for the NEA Scout to reach its destination, a smallish asteroid named 1991 VG. But it won’t be a leisurely cruise. The continuous thrust provided by sunlight hitting the solar sail will accelerate the probe to an impressive 63,975 mph (28.6 km/s) relative to the sun.

Given enough time, a spacecraft equipped with a solar sail can eventually accelerate to higher speeds than a similarly sized spacecraft propelled by a conventional chemical rocket.  

“A sail wins the race in terms of final velocity because it's the tortoise and the hare,” says Les Johnson, the Technical Advisor for NASA’s Advanced Concepts Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center. A chemical rocket provides tremendous initial thrust, but eventually burns up its fuel. “Since the sail doesn't use any fuel, we can keep thrusting as long as the sun is shining.”

The light stuff

Solar sails are made of ultrathin, highly reflective material. When a photon from the sun hits the mirror-like surface, it bounces off the sail and transfers its momentum to the spacecraft—the same way that a cue ball transfers its momentum when it smacks into another ball in a game of pool.

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The solar sail concept has been around since 1924, when Soviet rocket pioneers Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Friedrick Tsander speculated about spacecraft "using tremendous mirrors of very thin sheets" and harnessing “the pressure of sunlight to attain cosmic velocities.” Forty years later, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke popularized the idea in his influential short story about a solar sail racing tournament, Sunjammer .

NASA began investing in solar sail technology in the late 1990s. In 2010, it successfully launched a small, sail-propelled satellite into Earth’s orbit, where it remained for 240 days before reentering the atmosphere.  

That same year, the Japanese space agency demonstrated the feasibility of solar sails for interplanetary travel. A test craft hitched a ride aboard the Venus probe Akatsuki. The solar sail, dubbed the Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun ( IKAROS ), was released into space by the probe when it was 4.3 million miles away from Earth. Six months later, IKAROS made history when it successfully flew by Venus.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Ikaros solar sail is seen in deep space

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's IKAROS solar sail is seen in deep space after its deployment on June 14, 2010, in this view taken from a small camera ejected by the sail.

Solar sails have become feasible thanks to the revolution in electronics.  

That’s because solar sail design is hostage to Newton’s Second Law of Motion: Force = Mass x Acceleration. The force from sunlight is constant, so, in order to achieve high acceleration, you need to have low mass.  

“Back 25 or 30 years ago, electronics were not so lightweight,” says Johnson. “You couldn't imagine building a small enough spacecraft that didn't require a ginormous sail. With the advent of smart phones and the miniaturization of components, we're now able to make really lightweight, small spacecraft, which makes the size of the sail more reasonable.”  

In particular, Johnson points to the development of CubeSats —boxy mini-satellites designed to use off-she-shelf technology. The NEA Scout will be a CubeSat roughly the size of a large shoebox, propelled by a solar sail measuring 925 square feet (86 square meters).

Despite its modest size, the probe is packed with enough instruments to conduct an extensive survey of asteroid 1991 VG, taking pictures and measuring its chemical composition, size, and motion.  

NASA sees such reconnaissance as an essential first step for future crewed missions to asteroids. If an astronaut is going to explore the surface of a space rock, NASA wants to be sure that it’s rotating in a slow, predictable way, as opposed to rapidly tumbling in multiple directions. Likewise, the space agency needs to know ahead of time whether the asteroid is a solid object or a pile of rubble held together by gravity.

All the light moves

During its mission, the NEA Scout will perform at least one slow, close flyby—reducing speed to less than 22 mph (10 meters per second) and passing about half a mile above the asteroid’s surface.

That highlights another advantage of solar sails: They’re very maneuverable, sometimes outperforming conventional methods of propulsion.

The key to steering a sail—whether it’s in the Atlantic Ocean or in space—is to create an asymmetric thrust. There are various ways do this, using the celestial equivalents of masts and rigging. IKAROS had an electro-optic coating that went dark when voltage was applied, absorbing light instead of reflecting it. That made it possible to “tune” one part of the sail so that it got half as much solar push than the other side, causing the spacecraft to tip and tilt.  

The NEA Scout will take a different approach, using a sliding mechanism that moves the CubeSat back and forth relative to the booms where the sail is deployed.

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It looked like a bizarre alignment of meteors. It was something else.

“If you imagine a Coke can and that's our spacecraft, and you put a piece of paper on top of it, flat on top, that's the sail,” says Johnson. “Then, you can imagine just physically sliding the piece of paper to the left and the right. That's what we're going to be doing.” Tilting the sail also makes it possible to adjust the speed.

The agility of solar sail spacecraft—coupled with the constant thrust from an inexhaustible supply of fuel—opens the door to some intriguing possibilities.  

Let’s say you want to send a probe above the ecliptic plane of the solar system to study the north pole of the sun. In order to achieve the drastic change in direction and velocity—without using precious propellant—engineers would rely on a slingshot maneuver. “Right now, we’d have to send a spacecraft out to Jupiter for a gravity assist to get it out of the ecliptic plane and have a higher angle of orbit around the sun,” says Johnson. “With a sail, you can just kind of crank it up.”

Another potential application, closer to home, is a “pole sitting” satellite. At present, if you want a satellite to remain in a fixed position relative to a certain location on the ground—which is highly desirable for communications technology—your only option is to send it into geostationary orbit, 22,236 miles above the Earth and directly above the equator.  

But with a sail, “you can go above the Earth's North or South Pole and orbit the sun at the same rate the Earth is orbiting the sun,” says Johnson. “To keep the Earth’s gravity from pulling you in, you tip the sail so that it’s thrusting upward all the time. That way, you appear motionless above the North or South Pole.”  

Positive energy

Photons—which we see as sunlight—aren’t the only spacecraft fuel generated by the sun. NASA researchers have recently received more funding to investigate an advanced concept for a superfast sail propelled by charged particles in the solar wind.  

It’s called an electric sail, or e-sail. The idea, first proposed by Pekka Janhunen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, envisions a spacecraft encircled by 20 hair-thin wires that are each 12 miles (20 kilometers) long.  

solar sail

Over time, an e-sail can accelerate to speeds on the order of 62-93 miles per second (100-150 km/s), making it possible to travel beyond the solar system in just a decade.

The wires generate a positively charged electrical field extending dozens of meters into space. Protons in the solar wind, traveling at speeds as high as 466 miles per second (750 kilometers per second), are repelled by this electric field, thrusting the spacecraft forward as they are pushed away. The solar wind’s negatively charged particles are discharged by means of an “electron gun,” so that the e-sail maintains a positive electric field.

The e-sail would have plenty of fuel. While the sunlight that propels a solar sail significantly diminishes once a spacecraft reaches the asteroid belt, the solar wind is still blowing strong. Over time, an e-sail can accelerate to speeds on the order of 62-93 miles per second (100-150 km/s).

That means space probes could reach Jupiter in just two years, or Pluto in five. E-sails could enable an entirely new opportunity for exploration by providing express travel beyond the solar system, into interstellar space.

By way of comparison, it took the Voyager I spacecraft 35 years to reach the boundary of the solar system . A solar sail could make the same trip in 20 years, while an e-sail would arrive in just 10.

“I have to admit, about two and a half years ago, when my boss first came to me and said, 'we want you to look at this,' I laughed a little bit," says Bruce Wiegmann, a systems engineer at NASA's Advanced Concepts Office. "Then we looked at it and said, ‘this is pretty interesting.' We went from nonbelievers to believers."  

In fact, Wiegmann believes that a prototype could be launched in five years. In the meantime, some key issues need to be addressed. Although an e-sail doesn't need fuel, it requires a power source for the electron gun that expels electrons. How much power would an e-sail need? That depends on the number of electrons that the e-sail collects. NASA researchers are studying the question with charged wire in a plasma chamber that simulates the solar wind.  

Another challenge is preventing the long, thin wires from bending as they are pummeled by the solar wind. The solution: rotating the spacecraft at a speed that will produce enough centrifugal force to keep the wires taut.  

Next stop, Alpha Centauri

Les Johnson has a job outside of NASA: He's also a science fiction author . In fact, he credits the 1974 sci-fi novel The Mote in God’s Eye for sparking his interest in solar sails.

Unsurprisingly, he has big dreams for the distant future. He envisions sending a solar sail all the way to another solar system.

“We could build a big laser,” he says. “As the sail moves away from the sun and the sunlight gets dimmer, you could then shine the laser light on it to keep pushing it. The laser remains here in solar orbit, so it's continuing to push the sail faster and faster as it leaves the solar system.”

Of course, there are some technical details to work out. For starters, the sail would need to be the size of Texas. And the orbiting laser would require an energy output comparable to the amount produced by the whole world today.  

It sounds daunting, but in a later century, it might be doable. And the plan has the virtue of being steeped in actual physics.

The first space vessel made by humans and sent to another solar system could arrive just like its ocean faring predecessors did during the Age of Discovery: sails unfurled and guided by the stars.

Follow Mark Strauss on Twitter .

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Solar Wind

The solar wind continuously flows outward from the Sun and consists mainly of protons and electrons in a state known as a plasma. Solar magnetic field is embedded in the plasma and flows outward with the solar wind.

Different regions on the Sun produce solar wind of different speeds and densities. Coronal holes produce solar wind of high speed, ranging from 500 to 800 kilometers per second. The north and south poles of the Sun have large, persistent coronal holes, so high latitudes are filled with fast solar wind. In the equatorial plane, where the Earth and the other planets orbit, the most common state of the solar wind is the slow speed wind, with speeds of about 400 kilometers per second. This portion of the solar wind forms the equatorial current sheet.

During quiet periods, the current sheet can be nearly flat. As solar activity increases, the solar surface fills with active regions, coronal holes, and other complex structures, which modify the solar wind and current sheet. Because the Sun rotates every 27 days, the solar wind becomes a complex spiral of high and low speeds and high and low densities that looks like the skirt of a twirling ballerina (see figure). When high speed solar overtakes slow speed wind, it creates something known as a corotating interaction region. These interaction regions consist of solar wind with very high densities and strong magnetic fields

Above the current sheet, the higher speed solar wind typically has a dominant magnetic polarity in one direction and below the current sheet, the polarity is in the opposite direction. As the Earth moves through this evolving ballerina skirt, it is sometimes within the heliospheric current sheet, sometimes above it and sometime below it. When the magnetic field of the solar wind switches polarity, it is a strong indication that Earth has crossed the current sheet. The location of the Earth with respect to the current sheet is important because space weather impacts are highly dependent on the solar wind speed, the solar wind density, and the direction of the magnetic field embedded in the solar wind.

Each of the elements mentioned above play a role in space weather. High speed winds bring geomagnetic storms while slow speed winds bring calm space weather. Corotating interaction regions and to a lesser extent, current sheet crossings, can also cause geomagnetic disturbances. Thus specifying and forecasting the solar wind is critical to developing forecasts of space weather and its impacts at Earth.

Image courtesy of NASA

The Debrief

This New Deep Space Propulsion System Rides Like A Leaf on the Solar Wind Plasma Magnet Propulsion can revolutionize interplanetary travel, we just need to ride the wind.

In recent years, a surprisingly simple yet technologically viable option first proposed nearly twenty years ago has been steadily gaining momentum, and based on the tests and calculations already performed by its latest proponents, it may become the breakthrough propulsion system that opens up the greater parts of the Solar System to regular, affordable human exploration.  Known as a Plasma Magnet, the present-day iteration gaining momentum is simply called  Wind Rider .

Before We Learned to Ride The Solar Wind

Few if any individual achievement in human history is as impressive or as revolutionary as the chemical rocket. No other form of propulsion has ever launched a satellite into space, much less a human being, and pretty much every mission tasked with studying the various planets, moons, and other features of our solar system have been propelled to their destinations onboard chemical rockets.

Even the handful of experimental test flights of cutting-edge concepts like  ion drives  and  solar sails  performed by NASA have all hitched their initial ride to space on chemical rockets. Unsurprisingly, this method of propulsion is expected to dominate missions for NASA and the private sector alike, as well as pretty much every nation on Earth that has a space launch program for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately, for all of the raw power these fiery behemoths can unleash when hurling a satellite or other space-bound payload into Low Earth Orbit and beyond, the need to carry enough fuel has severely limited their range. 

Sure, rockets have reached the moon and Mars, and will likely carry humans to both in the next decade or so, but human-crewed missions to tempting targets like the moons of Jupiter or Saturn are virtually impossible using this technology. Even robotic explorations of these faraway destinations take years to complete, costing millions and millions of dollars each and every year along the way. As a result, such “flagship” missions are few and far between, with efforts like the  Cassini probe , which studied Saturn and a few of its moons up close, taking years to plan, prepare and execute.

This limitation to rocket technology has been known since the time of famed 20th-century rocketry pioneer and former Nazi scientist Werner von Braun, with untenable weight-to-payload ratios looming on the horizon like a huge barrier that seemed impossible to breach.

Now, a new wave of pioneering approaches to space travel have begun to emerge, offering humanity hope that missions to Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, a tempting target to search for life, Saturn’s moon Titan which offers some of the same tantalizing possibilities, or even the outer edges of the Solar System itself might one day become as routine and as inexpensive as launching a commercial satellite is today.

Some, like  WARP drives , seem decades, if not centuries away, while things like Nuclear Fusion Propulsion or Directed Energy Propulsion still require more research and development to become practical options. 

Solar Sails are closer to reality, having been studied and even tested in space, but limitations on size and materials have limited those projects to only  one potential NASA mission  on the horizon.

Wind Rider Is Different

“The Plasma Magnet is a wind drag device  invented  almost twenty years ago by Dr. John Slough from the University of Washington,” said Dr. Brent Freeze, a Cornell-educated mechanical engineer and one of the two scientists championing Wind Rider in an interview with  The Debrief . “Wind Rider is our updated version.”

In that same interview, Freeze explained the basics of the Wind Rider design and the basic science behind this revolutionary propulsion method.

“By definition, it is a drag device, meaning it’s not a rocket function,” said Freeze. This, he explained, means that, unlike a rocket that uses a propellant to create momentum, a plasma magnet like his Wind Rider uses the pressure of the solar wind to gather momentum.

“You can ride along with the wind currents and get to the destination efficiently,” said Freeze. “And it doesn’t require fuel.”

The enthusiastic engineer explained that this type of propulsion actually exists in nature, pointing to a dandelion coasting upon the wind to its ultimate destination. Riding the solar wind, Freeze explained, is what sets this type of technology apart from things like solar sails, which rely on the minute pressure of the photons and not the significantly more potent solar wind itself.

“The sun puts out two forms of energy that are propulsively useful,” explained Jeff Greason, a California Technical Institute educated aerospace and technology sector veteran and Freeze’s partner on the Wind Rider concept. “It puts out sunlight, the photon flux that we all see. And it puts out the solar wind, which is a stream of rapidly moving charged particles.”

This high-energy stream, says Greason, can vary in speeds from 450 kilometers per second up to 800 kilometers per second, depending on the angle. And, he says, Wind Rider is designed to capture the momentum of that stream of supercharged particles and ride its momentum to the edges of the solar system itself.

“The [solar wind] possesses tremendous amounts of concentrated kinetic energy that you can then grab onto,” Freeze told  The Debrief , “and we have a Wind Rider structure system that can do that.”

wind rider

How Does Wind Rider Work?

“Plasma sail propulsion based on the plasma magnet is a unique system that taps the ambient energy of the solar wind with minimal energy and mass requirements,” the  original 2005 research paper  abstract states. “In this way, the mass of the sail is reduced by orders of magnitude for the same thrust power.”

To accomplish this feat of engineering, the drive itself consists of a pair of polyphase coils mounted at or near the center of a cylindrical craft that once energized produce a rotating magnetic field. In the original design, these magnetic coils were proposed as aluminum, but, Freeze pointed out, in 2021, it has been replaced with superconducting materials that weren’t available to Slough in 2005.

When properly engaged, this magnetic field powers currents that generate a huge shell of plasma to surround the spacecraft, potentially reaching tens of kilometers in size. This shell of magnetically driven plasma expands outward in a disc-like shape until its size is equalized by the pressure of the solar wind and then uses the principle of drag to essentially surf the solar wind like the dandelion on its summer breeze.

“In some sense, all sails are what I call drag devices,” Greason told  The Debrief . “They’re like a parachute or a square-rigged sailing vessel, meaning they only fly before the wind.”

 “It is virtually propellantless as the intercepted solar wind replenishes the small amount of plasma required to carry the magnet currents, “the original paper abstract concludes. “Unlike a solid magnet or sail, the plasma magnet expands with falling solar wind pressure to provide constant thrust.”

Basically, as the craft moves farther and farther away from the Sun and the pressure of the solar wind continues to reduce, the size of the shell of plasma surrounding the spacecraft expands to compensate, offering the vehicle a constant thrust.

“There’s a magnetic pressure in that loop of current that makes it want to expand,” Greason explained. “And there’s a pressure from the wind and dynamic pressure that makes it want to contract. It grows until those forces are in equilibrium.”

He noted that this original design was even tested in 2006 by Slough, albeit on Earth and in laboratory conditions. Still, those results confirmed the method and thrust analysis of the original theory.

“We have not replicated the tests the previous people have done in the laboratory, but they’re based on  published results  in the literature,” Greason told  The Debrief.  “Subscale tests have been done on the ground in plasma wind tunnels, and it more or less matches the predictions made by the theory. They measured that they had thrust.”

How Fast is Wind Rider?

When NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) launched  the Cassini probe  to study Saturn and its moons back in 1997, even the famed space administration noted the difficulty in reaching such a distant target.

“Unable to be launched directly to Saturn with the propulsion systems available at the time,” NASA’s  mission archive site explains , “Cassini took a roundabout route to reach the ringed planet.” This route is known as a VVEJGA (Venus-Venus-Earth-Jupiter Gravity Assist) trajectory, and according to the same NASA mission archive site, “Cassini made two flybys of Venus (April 1998 and June 1999), one of the Earth (August 1999), and one of Jupiter (December 2000),” before gathering enough momentum to depart for its ultimate goal, Saturn.

It would be another four years before Cassini finally reached the ringed planet, and its companion,  Huygens probe , wasn’t dropped toward Saturn’s moon Titan until 2005, nearly eight years after its launch.

“The missions to the outer solar system tend to be flagship missions, billion-dollar-plus missions that you don’t do very often,” Greason told  The Debrief . “And that’s because of time and cost. You stand up this big team to design the mission, and then they have not to get laid off. They still have to be there when the mission arrives. So missions like that take a long time and cost a lot of money. By dramatically reducing the transit time, you dramatically increase the odds of the same team being on the project when the research is ready to be done on-site.”

So, if a probe like Cassini needed close to a decade to reach Saturn, how long would Wind Rider need to surf the solar wind to the ringed planet?

“Six weeks,” Freeze told  The Debrief.  

In fact, he said, his team has calculated an entire array of potential targets within the solar system and has found that pretty much each of them is reachable in a year or less. 

Want to go to Jupiter? Wind Rider can have you racing by the gas giant within a paltry three or four weeks. Fancy a trip to Neptune, the planet farthest from the Sun (sorry Pluto)? Wind Rider can do it in about 18 weeks.

“It is possible to reach nearly all destinations within the solar system in a year,” Freeze said, “with at least one launch window opening per year for each of them.”

When asked about the possibility of using Wind Rider to venture to exoplanets that are light-years away, both team members pointed to the dramatic distances and hundreds if not thousands of years their vehicle would need to traverse those distances. However, both still noted that their proposed spacecraft is significantly faster for future interstellar robotic missions than the lone man-made vehicle to have actually left our solar system.

“Because it’s limited to solar power, you have to do all your acceleration in the inner solar system,” Greason explained. “So that limits us to quote-unquote, only about 300 kilometers per second of departure speed, which is still something like five times faster than  Voyager .”

What is JOVE?

On October 6th, 2021, Freeze and Greason teamed up with ten other scientists and engineers to outline a technology demonstrator mission to Jupiter they call JOVE.

“The title of our talk is ‘Jupiter Observing Velocity Experiment (JOVE), Introduction to Wind Rider Solar Electric Propulsion Demonstrator and Science Objectives,'” Freeze explained in an email to  The Debrief .

Presented at the  53rd Division of Planetary Sciences  conference, which is an affiliated conference managed by the  American Astronomical Society , the JOVE mission is a technology demonstrator that would serve as the first real-world test of a plasma magnet propelled craft in space, as well as a demonstration of a range of collaborative technologies designed to aid in the mission. 

For example, although Wind Rider can travel extremely fast, the lack of onboard fuel offers no way for the craft to slow down, much less maneuver once it has reached its target destination. The JOVE mission seeks to solve that challenge by combining a nuclear power source with the plasma magnet, offering separate propulsion systems for local and long-distance travel.

“It’s like in Star Trek with the WARP drive and Impulse,” Freeze said, “only the Wind Rider is the WARP, and the nuclear gives you the local, the impulse drive capabilities.”

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In JOVE, that metaphorical “impulse” drive is actually a pulsed nuclear fusion concept in development by researchers from the University of Huntsville, Alabama, which will be covered in an upcoming article on  The   Debrief . Regardless of the specific system used once the craft is at its destination (Greason noted that there are even some proposed nuclear-based power systems using the same readily available isotope found in a common smoke detector), combining that secondary drive system with the Wind Rider plasma magnet system offers up a whole range of untapped targets for researchers to explore.

“The combination of those two (plasma magnet and nuclear) would be really interesting,” Greason told  The Debrief . “Now you can start thinking about doing, you know, 100, 200 million dollar missions to the outer solar system. And there are so many places to go. We haven’t been to any of the moons of Uranus and Titan, except for the Voyager flyby once. We have never been to any of the trans-Neptunian objects other than Pluto. There are all kinds of incredibly interesting moons of even Jupiter and Saturn that we would love to do a dedicated mission to that we simply haven’t done.”

When Will Wind Rider Fly?

There are currently no officially planned missions to test Wind Rider or any other plasma magnet style propulsion system on the books at NASA. Still, when asked by  The Debrief  how quickly such a system could be put into place with appropriate funding, both members of the Wind Rider team gave similar estimates.

“I think that if it were fully funded in the next 90 days, with NASA approval and all regulatory approval, you could launch in late 2023,” said Freeze. 

“Two or three years,” echoed Greason. “Maybe a bit more.”

Of course, to even be considered for funding in the next ten years, the team pointed out that a project like Wind Rider would have to show up on  NASA’s Decadal Survey , a document that essentially guides the administration’s missions over the ensuing ten years, and whose next iteration is not expected to be released until later this year.

“The way that actually works is you have various outer solar system bodies that people think might be good candidates for life,” Greason told  The Debrief . “And then it becomes a fight in order to even get your mission under consideration.”

Fortunately, after presenting their concept at the  AIAA annual conference in August  and the JOVE presentation in October, it appears that the Wind Rider concept is gaining even more momentum, with yet another presentation planned at the  American Geophysical Unions (AGU) Fall 2021 Meeting , that the researchers say is even  more aggressive than JOVE .

“There is a follow-on presentation for a different destination (much farther out than Jupiter) that also involves the use of a Wind Rider,” Freeze stated. “It was accepted last week for a poster session at the AGU Fall Meeting in New Orleans on Monday, December 13th.”

According to its  written summary , that mission proposes sending a Wind Rider out to the mind-numbing distance of 542 AU (one AU, or Astronomical Unit, is the distance between Earth and the Sun, or just shy of 150 million kilometers), a point at which Freeze told  The Debrief , “you can use the Sun as a magnifying lens to image things.” Their particular target in that upcoming conference presentation is the star system Trappist-1, which is of particular interest to astronomers and astrobiologists alike  for its Earthlike planets that may have a high potential for harboring extraterrestrial life .

As far as what, if any more experiments can be conducted before putting an actual test vehicle like Wind Rider in space, both Freeze and Greason indicated that the testable concepts have all more or less been done and proven successful, and for any further progress to be made it will take the will and funding to put such a vehicle in space and see if it works.

“The next step is to actually go fly,” Freeze told  The Debrief . “There’s only so many tests you can do on the ground.”

When asked if any technological barriers exist or if any custom materials will have to be created to perform such a real-world flight, the Wind Rider team said no.

“Everything is commercially available,” said Freeze. “We’ve been very careful to make sure that all of the coatings, all the materials that are available, all of the systems have really been demonstrated on the ground for years.”

“What we need now is funding,” added Greason. “Exactly how much I’ll defer to Brent, but it’s tens of millions, not hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Regardless of cost, both researchers are convinced of the present-day viability of their solution and confident that if successful, it would represent the fastest spacecraft around.

“There’s no rocket I’m aware of, chemical, electric, or otherwise, to keep up with a Wind Rider,” said Freeze.

Greason echoed the system’s advantages, telling  The Debrief,  “this technology, or this suite of technologies, has the potential to break that paradigm and say, ‘Okay, well, if you can do a $200 million mission, we could fly one every year. And in 10 years, we could have done a mission to every single one of these interesting targets.'”

Time will tell if the Wind Rider system or one like it makes it onto the next Decadal Survey, but given the enthusiasm and reputations of the researchers involved, not to mention the impressive teams joining the efforts on the JOVE and Trappist-1 mission concepts, the overall viability of the technology itself makes it feel like it may finally be time to put one of the suckers in space and watch it sail  like a leaf on the wind .

Correction: In the original version of this article, it was mistakingly stated that the Wind Rider project would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. This was a misquote and has been corrected to acuretly reflect the statements provided by the project leads.

Follow and connect with author Christopher Plain on Twitter: @plain_fiction

Covering a story? Visit our page for journalists or call (773) 702-8360.

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The solar wind, explained

The solar wind is a flow of particles that comes off the sun at about one million miles per hour and travels throughout the entire solar system. First proposed in the 1950s by University of Chicago physicist Eugene Parker, the solar wind is visible in the halo around the sun during an eclipse and sometimes when the particles hit the Earth’s atmosphere—as the aurora borealis, or northern lights.

While the solar wind protects Earth from other harmful particles coming from space, storms can also threaten our satellite and communications networks.

Jump to a section:

What is the solar wind, how was the solar wind discovered, how does the solar wind affect us, what mysteries remain about the solar wind, what is nasa’s parker probe.

The surface of the sun is blisteringly hot at 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit—but its atmosphere, called the corona, is more than a thousand times hotter. It is also incredibly active; those flares and loops are the halo you see around the sun when there’s an eclipse.

The corona is so hot that the sun’s gravity can’t hold it, so particles are flung off into space and travel throughout the solar system in every direction. As the sun spins, burns and burps, it creates complex swirls and eddies of particles. These particles, mostly protons and electrons, are traveling about a million miles per hour as they pass Earth.

This flow of particles, called the “solar wind,” has an enormous impact on our lives. It protects us from stray cosmic rays coming from elsewhere in the galaxy—but the effects of storms on the sun’s surface can also affect our telecommunications networks. The wind would also pose a threat to astronauts traveling through space, so NASA wants to get a better understanding of its properties.

The science behind what is happening on the sun’s surface is enormously complex; read more about it at NASA .

In 1957, Eugene Parker was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago when he began looking into an open question in astrophysics: Are particles coming off of the sun? Such a phenomenon seemed unlikely; Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t flow out into space, and many experts presumed the same would be true for the sun. But scientists had noticed an odd phenomenon: The tails of comets, no matter which direction they traveled, always pointed away from the sun—almost as though something was blowing them away.

Parker began to do the math. He calculated that if the sun’s corona was a million degrees, there had to be a flow of particles expanding away from its surface, eventually becoming extremely fast—faster than the speed of sound. He would later name the phenomenon the “solar wind.”

“And that’s the end of the story, except it isn’t, because people immediately said, ‘I don’t believe it,’” Parker said.

He wrote a paper and submitted it to the Astrophysical Journal ; the response from scientific reviewers was swift and scathing.

“You must understand how unbelievable this sounded when he proposed it,” said Fausto Cattaneo, a UChicago professor of astronomy and astrophysics. “That this wind not only exists, but is traveling at supersonic speed! It is extraordinarily difficult to accelerate anything to supersonic speeds in the laboratory, and there is no means of propulsion.”

Luckily, the editor of the journal at the time was eminent astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Parker’s colleague at the University of Chicago. Chandrasekhar didn’t like the idea either, but the future Nobel laureate couldn’t find anything wrong with Parker’s math, so he overruled the reviewers and published the paper.

Only three years later, when a NASA spacecraft called Mariner II took readings on its journey to Venus in 1962, the results were unambiguous. “There was the solar wind, blowing 24/7,” Parker said.

The breakthrough discovery reshaped our picture of space and the solar system. Scientists came to understand that the solar wind not only flows past Earth, but throughout the solar system and beyond. It also both protects and threatens us.

“The solar wind magnetically blankets the solar system, protecting life on Earth from even higher-energy particles coming from elsewhere in the galaxy,” explained UChicago astrophysicist Angela Olinto. “But it also affects the sophisticated satellite communications we have today. So understanding the precise structure and dynamics and evolution of the solar wind is crucial for civilization as a whole.”

Normally, Earth’s magnetic field shields us from most of these particles. But sometimes, the sun “burps,” throwing a billion tons of material into space flying at several thousand kilometers per second. These are called coronal mass ejections—and if a big one happened to hit Earth, the shockwave could cause chaos and damage to our communication systems. “It can cause the magnetic field that surrounds Earth to ring like a struck bell,” said Prof. Justin Kasper, a UChicago alum and physicist at the University of Michigan . Such a scenario would generate all kinds of disturbances: Aircraft would lose radio communication, GPS would be thrown off by up to miles, and banking, communications and electronic systems could be knocked out.

This has actually happened before: In 1859, a giant solar eruption known as the Carrington Event shut down telegraph and electrical systems for days. The aurora borealis was so strong that people reported being able to read a newspaper by its light even at 1 o’clock in the morning. “There was a ghastly splendor over the horizon of the North, from which fantastic spires of light shot up, and a rosy glow extended, like a vapor tinged with fire, to the zenith,” wrote the Cincinnati Daily Commercial.

But in 1859, we weren’t as reliant on electronics as we are today. A 2013 study by Lloyd’s of London estimated that a similar storm hitting Earth today could cause up to $2.6 trillion in damages to the United States alone, and would trigger widespread blackouts and damages to electrical grids.

There are some precautions we could take if we had advance notice, which is why engineers want to know when a solar storm is incoming. Luckily, several spacecraft orbiting the sun take pictures and send them back to Earth so that NASA can monitor for eruptions. ( You can see current space weather conditions here.) But analyzing these images still requires an eruption to first show up on the sun’s surface, which only provides minutes or hours of warning. As of now, there still isn’t way to predict such eruptions before they happen.

A better understanding of the solar wind also factors into another human venture: space travel. Some solar wind particles are extremely energetic, and could poke tiny holes through important spacecraft equipment—not to mention human bodies. In order to protect astronauts, NASA needs to understand the components, characteristics, and frequencies of such particles, as well as how to forecast space weather in advance for safe journeys.

One of the biggest problems facing space weather forecasters is that we still don’t know why the atmosphere of the sun is so much hotter than the surface.

In everyday life, you’d expect the temperature to decrease steadily as you get further away from a heat source, like moving your hand away from a fire. But that’s not what happens on the sun. In this case, the heat comes from fusion happening in the sun’s core, which gradually cools to 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the surface—then shoots up again to millions of degrees in the corona.

Many theories have been proposed. Scientists know that the entire surface of the sun is constantly churning and erupting; perhaps there are smaller “nanoflares” (each still packing the energy of a 10-megaton hydrogen bomb) constantly erupting all over the sun’s surface that carry heat to the atmosphere. There are also magnetic fields interacting at the sun’s surface; it’s possible these magnetic fields are hitting each other with explosive force billions of times per second—“canceling” each other out, but heating the atmosphere in the process.

Questions that scientists would like to answer include:

  • Why is the corona so much hotter than the surface of the sun? How does the solar wind accelerate away from the sun?
  • How fast are the particles moving, and how hot are they getting?
  • Are magnetic fields heating the particles, or are there mechanical waves coming from the surface of the sun? (or both?)

A deeper understanding of these processes could help forecast space weather that affects life on Earth, reveal more about the conditions that astronauts in orbit above our world and journeying for long distances would face, and even provide clues about what kinds of star activity might favor habitability on distant planets.

But to get answers, we need to get close to the sun itself.

Scientists have been eager for a mission to the sun since space travel first became possible. Not only is the sun vital to life on Earth, it is also by far the closest star we can study. But the extreme temperatures meant that scientists needed to wait for the development of technology that could shield the spacecraft from the intense heat and radiation of the sun.

In 2018, this dream finally came true. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe—named for Eugene Parker in honor of his pioneering research—began a seven-year journey to the blisteringly hot corona of the sun on Aug. 12, 2018. The probe is the fastest-moving object built by humans, traveling at more than 150,000 miles per hour. It’s so fast that it’s already made several trips around the sun.

The probe’s heat shield, made of just under five inches of a cutting-edge carbon composite, keeps the craft’s delicate instruments at a cool 85 degrees Fahrenheit, even as the corona rages at 3,000,000 degrees outside. (Except for one especially tough instrument,  built by UChicago alum Justin Kasper , which peeks around the edge of the craft to scoop up particles of the solar wind).

The probe has already sent huge amounts of data back to Earth, which led to discoveries such as bizarre “switchbacks” in the solar wind .

Parker, then 91, flew to Cape Canaveral with his family to watch the NASA spacecraft launch.

“So much has gone into this launch, and then to see it all disappear slowly—fading away into the night sky, knowing it will never come back—it was a moving experience,” Parker said. “You rarely have a space mission that doesn’t come up with the unexpected, and it’s actually going to get more exciting as the mission goes on and crosses into regions that spacecraft have never been in before. It’s just fascinating every step of the way.”

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The Future of Space Travel Electric Sails and Solar Wind Power

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Solar Wind Power: Revolutionizing Space Travel with Renewable Energy

The future of space travel: exploring new frontiers and beyond, advancements in electric sails: promising prospects for interstellar exploration, electric sails: harnessing solar wind for advanced space propulsion.

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solar wind space travel

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solar wind space travel

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Five questions about space weather and its effects on earth, answered.

The headshot image of Vanessa Thomas

Vanessa Thomas

1) what kind of weather events occur in space, and when are they likely to strike, 2) so…why doesn’t space weather just torch us, 3) what are the effects of space weather on earth, 4) how do scientists monitor space weather, 5) can individuals prepare for space weather events.

A labeled graphic shows the Sun in the upper left with the label "space weather," an airplane labeled "airline passenger radiation," a cellular tower labeled "cellular disruption," power lines labeled "electric grid disruption," a radar dome labeled "radar interference," a radar dish antenna labeled "radio wave disturbance," and a GPS receiver on a tripod labeled "GPS disruption from scintillation."

Open the weather app on your phone or glance at the news and you can quickly find a detailed forecast for the weather in your location. The report is likely to affect your behavior for the day: if you put on sandals or snow boots, if you exercise indoors or jog around the block, if you walk to work or take the bus.

Similarly, space is full of dynamic weather patterns that can have real effects for life on Earth. Space weather refers to conditions in the solar system produced by the Sun’s activity.

Just as weather is always occurring on Earth, space weather is ongoing. Even without major solar activity, satellites and communications systems can be impacted by variability in the density and composition of the near-earth environment.

“Space isn’t empty like we often think,” said Alexa Halford, space physics researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The study of space weather is really just trying to understand the space environment around us, like we try to understand terrestrial weather.”

At its most extreme, space weather can disrupt radio communications and endanger astronauts. In the past, activity on the Sun has even temporarily caused large electrical blackouts. But with forecasting and proper preparation, these disruptive effects can be largely avoided. That’s why NASA studies space weather conditions.

Quite different from your average terrestrial rain or snow, space weather in our solar system is composed of radiation and particles from the Sun.

The Sun is made up of superhot electrically charged plasma, the fourth state of matter. Plasma constantly streams toward the planets as solar wind, pouring energy into near-Earth space.

That’s not all the Sun is capable of. Sometimes, it hosts much more dramatic events. Solar flares are tremendous explosions on the surface of the Sun, releasing energy which travels at the speed of light. Their effects on Earth are apparent in eight minutes. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are eruptions of large clouds of solar plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun. The geomagnetic storms resulting from these events may occur one or several days later. CMEs and solar flares can also occur at the same time.

An infographic shows the Sun with a coronal mass ejection at the top and a solar flare in the lower right. Words on the graphic label and describe each type of phenomenon.

The Sun operates in an eleven-year solar cycle, and CMEs and flares are more common during the middle part of the solar cycle, called solar maximum. During solar maximum, the Sun may produce several CMEs per day and a few truly massive explosions per year, said Antti Pulkkinen, director of the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA Goddard. In comparison, during solar minimum, the Sun may be relatively quiet for extended periods of time. In solar cycle 25, the Sun is expected to hit solar maximum around 2025.

Earth has a strong, large magnetic field produced by charged molten iron churning in its core. That field keeps away most of the charged solar wind streaming toward Earth, just like an umbrella works in a rainstorm. The area within the safety of Earth’s magnetic field is called the magnetosphere.

An illustration shows the Sun in red on the left and Earth and the Moon on the right, with blue magnetic field lines shown around Earth.

Earth’s magnetosphere is quite large and strong. On the side away from the Sun, it extends hundreds of times the length of Earth’s roughly 4,000 mile-radius. The magnetosphere faces much more pressure on the side facing the Sun, where it extends 6 to 10 times Earth’s radius (between around 25,000 miles to 40,000 miles).

“The magnetosphere is this really nice protective shield,” Halford said. “It blocks out most of the radiation and bad weather that you get in space, but not all of it.”

Another barrier is Earth’s thick atmosphere, which blocks harmful light radiation from the Sun from reaching Earth’s surface.

As Halford explains, the protection offered by the magnetosphere isn’t perfect. There are three main ways that an explosion on the Sun’s surface can affect Earth.

  • Radio blackout storm: This type of storm, generated by electromagnetic energy – light, mostly in wavelengths that are invisible to human eyes – is most likely to occur following a solar flare. It takes light only eight minutes to reach Earth from the Sun, so the effects from this type of event are almost immediate. Electromagnetic energy released in flares disrupts Earth’s upper atmosphere –– the region where communication signals travel – and can cause signal blackouts. One risk of a radio blackout is that radios are often used for emergency communications, for instance, to direct people amid an earthquake or hurricane. Imagine that a solar storm happens to coincide with a natural disaster, when radio communications are essential for keeping people safe. This happened during the September 2017 hurricane Irma . If operators are notified quickly, Halford says, they can change radio frequencies and avoid an outage.
  • Solar radiation storm: A solar radiation storm emits a sea of very small, fast-moving charged particles. At their accelerated speed, these particles carry lots of energy and can permeate the magnetosphere and endanger astronauts and spacecraft in Earth’s orbit. To avoid the radiation impact, sensitive systems in satellites may be powered off and astronauts may be instructed to build shelter, or move to better shielded sections within their spacecraft. Halford likens it to hiding in a basement during a tornado.
  • Geomagnetic storm: Within one to three days of a solar eruption, giant clouds of plasma, CMEs, may reach Earth’s orbit, compressing the magnetosphere. The influx of charged particles and electromagnetic fields rippling through Earth’s magnetosphere can induce currents in many important electrical systems on Earth’s surface, including power grids. Major blackouts from geomagnetic storms occurred in 1989 and 2003. Halford and Pulkkinen said in many countries including the United States, there are safeguards in place to decrease the likelihood of this happening again.

A variety of agencies keep close watch on space weather. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center is the U.S. government’s official source for space weather forecasts. NASA Heliophysics coordinates research efforts with NOAA, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory on the National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan. NASA Heliophysics also maintains a fleet of scientific observatories to observe solar eruptions and Earth-directed space weather.

Scientists and federal government organizations monitor and prepare for space weather events. Engineers work to build “rad-hard,” or radiation resistant, satellites. Astronauts may need to take shelter during certain space weather events. Power grid operators may implement safeguards against geomagnetic storm effects. The United States government maintains a webpage with information about what to do if space weather causes a power outage or other damage.

However, for most individuals, Halford says there’s only one thing they may wish to do in the event of a space weather event: prepare for the aurora. Those near the poles may get to see beautiful displays of light in the sky as the loss of particles from the magnetosphere during a geomagnetic storm excites particles in Earth’s atmosphere. Traveling to a location with a good view may require a flight, a hotel reservation, a hot chocolate, and a warm blanket.

By Alison Gold NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center , Greenbelt, Md.

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Physics > Space Physics

Title: a multi-model ensemble system for the outer heliosphere (mmesh): solar wind conditions near jupiter.

Abstract: How the solar wind influences the magnetospheres of the outer planets is a fundamentally important question, but is difficult to answer in the absence of consistent, simultaneous monitoring of the upstream solar wind and the large-scale dynamics internal to the magnetosphere. To compensate for the relative lack of in-situ data, propagation models are often used to estimate the ambient solar wind conditions at the outer planets for comparison to remote observations or in-situ measurements. This introduces another complication: the propagation of near-Earth solar wind measurements introduces difficult-to-assess uncertainties. Here, we present the Multi-Model Ensemble System for the outer Heliosphere (MMESH) to begin to address these issues, along with the resultant multi-model ensemble (MME) of the solar wind conditions near Jupiter. MMESH accepts as input any number of solar wind models together with contemporaneous in-situ spacecraft data. From these, the system characterizes typical uncertainties in model timing, quantifies how these uncertainties vary under different conditions, attempts to correct for systematic biases in the input model timing, and composes a MME with uncertainties from the results. For the case of the Jupiter-MME presented here, three solar wind propagation models were compared to in-situ measurements from the near-Jupiter spacecraft Ulysses and Juno which span diverse geometries and phases of the solar cycle, amounting to more than 14,000 hours of data over 2.5 decades. The MME gives the most-probable near-Jupiter solar wind conditions for times within the tested epoch, outperforming the input models and returning quantified estimates of uncertainty.

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solar wind space travel

The Solar Wind Sherpas

Total Solar Eclipse Chasers in Search of the Physics of the Corona and the Solar Wind

Welcome to the permanent site of the Solar Wind Sherpas!  Throughout this site, you will find information on who we are , the science that we do , total solar eclipses , instruments , publications , previous eclipse expeditions , previous blogs , and of course, all the information on this year’s expedition, including the blog!

Note:  some of the pages are currently under construction, but are coming soon.  make sure to come back and navigate through all the pages.

The Solar Wind Sherpas is an intrepid team of international scientists and explorers who travel the world to observe and collect data on total solar eclipses (TSEs).  The team, appropriately named given the massive amount of equipment they bring to each of the (usually remote) observing sites, is led by Dr. Shadia R. Habbal of the Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu, Hawai’i.  To date, the Solar Wind Sherpas have carried out 14 eclipse expeditions including India (1995), Syria (1999), Libya (2006), China (2008), the Arctic (2015) and Indonesia (2016).

Starting with a group of six in 1995, the Solar Wind Sherpas have now over two dozen members who share the same passion for exploration and discovery to unveil the secrets that keep the solar corona at over a million degress.

Our team is one of the very few worldwide who has capitalized on the diagnostic potential of multi-wavelength observations of coronal emission lines, leading to a number of discoveries, as demonstrated by our publications list .

What is a Total Solar Eclipse?

Artist rendition of the alignment of the Sun-Moon-Earth during a total solar eclipse. Credit: Ernest Wright.

A total solar eclipse (TSE) occurs when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun covering the solar disk and casting a shadow over Earth.  Specifically, the Sun’s diameter, which is 400 times bigger than the Moon’s and 400 times farther from Earth than the Moon, combined with planetary motion, results in the alignment of the Sun, the Moon and the Earth every 12 to 18 months.

2015 total solar eclipse over Svalbard, Norway. Credit: Miloslav Druckmuller & Peter Aniol.

Totality occurs when the Sun’s disk is completely covered by the Moon.  This occurs because the Moon is at the correct distance from the Earth to appear to be the same size as the Sun’s disk.  It is only during totality that we are able to see the Sun’s atmosphere, or corona.  The brightness of the solar disk hides the dimmer atmosphere on a regular basis.

Eclipse Sunglasses:  Why and When?

The appearance of the Sun at different phases of an eclipse from partial (left) when the Moon starts to obscure part of the solar disk to a full obscuration causing a total solar eclipse when the solar corona becomes visible (center), to the receding Moon and partial phases (right) after totality. Credit: Rick Fienberg.

Eclipse sunglasses are a safe way to view the Sun at any time other than during totality.  In particular, as the Moon starts to cover the Sun (this is called first contact ), look through the glasses in order to see the crescent shape forming.  For about an hour, as the Moon continues to cover the Sun, the crescent will continue to get smaller and smaller until it disappears and the Sun is completely covered by the Moon (this is called second contact ).

At second contact, it is safe to remove the sunglasses as totality has been reached.  At this point, when the corona is visible to the naked eye, the structure of the corona, white rays and streamers radiating around the lunar disk can be seen.  The intensity of the corona is much like that of a full Moon.  Once the Moon begins to uncover the Sun (this is called third contact ) and continues to move across the sky, the eclipse can be viewed in reverse order.  Once again, eclipse sunglasses must be worn.

Beyond the Beauty Lies the Science

2015 total solar eclipse over Svalbard, Norway. Credit: Miloslav Druckmüller, Shadia Habbal, Peter Aniol & Pavel Štarha.

From myths in ancient times to the scientific age, we have come a long way in our understanding of the Sun and the solar corona.  Beyond the solar surface, or photosphere, lies an atmosphere that manifests itself naturally only during a total solar eclipse.  The Spanish astronomer José Joaquín de Ferrer bestowed the name corona, or crown, to the bright halo that appears during totality.  Since then, we have developed our current understanding of this atmosphere, its composition, what defines its ‘shape’ and what fuels its expansion.

Complementing eclipse observations with imaging instruments in an uninterrupted manner over extended periods of time, covering a broad range of wavelengths, from the visible to X-rays, is essential for achieving a comprehensive view of the corona and its expansion into interplanetary space.  Eclipse observations were the first to raise fundamental questions pertaining to the solar atmosphere, namely its corona, and its expansion into interplanetary space.  These questions can be summarized as follows: 1) what causes the corona to be so hot? 2) where does the solar wind originate from? and 3) what determines the stability or instability of magnetic structures?

“The whole time there was nothing but the Sun and the silence.” —Albert Camus, The Stranger

The Solar Wind Sherpas are dedicated to studying the solar wind (the gas escaping from the Sun).  During total solar eclipses, we look at the corona in white light (light that can be seen with the naked eye) and with special filters, which see only the emission of certain elements that we know are present in the corona.   From this, we produce an image that shows, for example, Fe XIV (iron that has been ionized 13 times), or Fe XI (iron that has been ionized 9 times), etc.  Each image shows the distribution of these ions in the corona, which translate into the distribution of the temperature.  Since the ionized material is controlled by the Sun’s magnetic field, the distribution of temperature is controlled by the magnetic field.  However, we can capture the distribution by imaging the emission of the different ions.

Our group’s addiction with observations of total solar eclipses stems from the unique science from such phenomena.  Every eclipse observation has yielded new results that enhance our understanding of the solar corona.  Not only have we shown the variations in the distribution of temperature, we continue to acquire information about the Sun’s magnetism, a tool through which we can go back to fundamental questions of mechanisms that enable the Sun to produce such a hot corona.  See “Observations and Experiments” for more details.

The 2017 Total Solar Eclipse

    On 21 August 2017, in a span of 90 minutes, the Moon’s shadow will fall upon Oregon and spread to South Carolina. With a couple of minutes at each step along the way, millions can witness the clockwork of planetary motion that will reveal the beauty of their own star. —S. Habbal

solar wind space travel

The upcoming eclipse will offer unique opportunities for conducting a range of scientific experiments to unravel the secrets of the corona.  In order to maximize our chances of obtaining good data, we will be observing from five different sites located between Oregon and Nebraska.  Identical equipment will be used at all sites except for spectrometers, which will be used at four out of the five sites.

Each of the primary sites will have the following identical systems: (1) Imaging in Fe XI 7892 ̊A, Fe XIV 5303 ̊A, Ar X 5536 ̊A and Ar XI 6918 ̊A, (2) imaging spectroscopy with triple channel spectrographs, and (3) broad-band white light imaging. The secondary sites will be limited to imaging in Fe XI, Fe XIV, broad-band white light and triple channel spectrographs.

Observing Sites of the Sherpas

Oregon, USA. Source: Wikipedia.

Mitchell, OR

Nine Sherpas will be observing from Mitchell, OR.  Totality will begin at 18:22 UT (10:22 AM local time) and last for 2 minutes and 3 seconds at their location in Mitchell.  Observations will be carried out using white light cameras, multi filter imagers and a 3-channel spectrometer.

Idaho, USA. Source: Wikipedia.

Eight Sherpas will be observing from Mackay, ID.  Totality will begin at 18:32 UT (11:32 AM local time) and last for 2 minutes and 4 seconds at their location in Mackay.  Observations will be carried out using white light cameras, multi filter imagers and a 3-channel spectrometer.

Wyoming, USA. Source: Wikipedia.

Whiskey Mountain, WY

Three Sherpas will be observing from the top of Whiskey Mountain in Wyoming.  Totality will begin at 18:38 UT (11:38 AM local time) and last for 2 minutes and 21 seconds at the top of the mountain.  Observations will be carried out using white light cameras and multi filter imagers.

Guernsey, WY

Six Sherpas will be observing from Guernsey, WY.  Totality will begin at 18:47 UT (11:47 AM local time) and last for 2 minutes and 16 seconds at their location in Guernsey.  Observations will be carried out using white light cameras, multi filter imagers and a 3-channel spectrometer.  Naty Alzate will be giving a public lecture before the eclipse.  Date and time TBD.

Nebraska, USA. Source: Wikipedia.

Alliance, NE

Six Sherpas will be observing from Alliance, NE.  Totality will begin at 18:50 UT (11:50 AM local time) and last for 2 minutes and 30 seconds at their location in Alliance.  Observations will be carried out using white light cameras, multi filter imagers and a 3-channel spectrometer.  Martina Arndt will be giving a public lecture before the eclipse.  Date and time TBD.

Useful Links

“the great american eclipse”.

—2017 eclipse website containing maps, information and merchandise

“Eclipse:  Who? What? Where? When? and How?”

—A NASA article containing basic detailed information for eclipse day

“Total Solar Eclipse 2017: When, Where and How to See It (Safely)”

—An article from Space.com

“The Solar Eclipse Experience”

—An explanation of eclipse terms and stages

“NASA Eclipse Website”

—NASA’s eclipse website on past and future eclipses

“Experience the 2017 Eclipse Across America”

—NASA’s main website for this year’s eclipse

“Why is the Sun’s Corona so hot? Why are Prominences so Cool?”

—A Physics Today article detailing the history and science behind observations of the corona.

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With space travel comes motion sickness. These engineers want to help

Spacecraft floats in the ocean as several boats packed with people arroach

U.S. Navy crews recover the Orion Spacecraft for NASA's Artemis I mission from where it landed in the Pacific Ocean in December 2022. No human astronauts were aboard. (Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel)

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In a corner room of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building at CU Boulder, Torin Clark is about to go for a ride.

The associate professor straps himself into what looks like an intimidating dentist’s chair perched on metal scaffolding, which, in turn, rests on a circular base. The whole set up resembles a carnival attraction.

Which, in a way, it is.

Motion sickness and space   By the numbers

Percentage of space travelers who experience space motion sickness.

Typical length of a bout of space motion sickness.

Percent of astronauts who reported vomitting as a symptom of their space motion sickness in a survey from the 1980s. Other common symptoms included anorexia (78%), headache (64%), stomach awareness (61%) and malaise (58%).

Percent of Russian cosmonauts who experienced "readaption syndrome," similar to symptoms of motion sickness, upon their return to Earth.

Source: Heer & Paloski, 2006, "Autonomic Neuroscience"

“Torin, are you ready to start?” calls out graduate student Taylor Lonner from in front of a monitor displaying several views of Clark. “I’m going to go to 5 r.p.m. over two minutes.”

Clark gives a thumbs up and begins to spin—first slowly, then faster and faster. The chair whips in circles around the room, creating a centrifugal force that forces his body back into the headrest. 

Once the machine slows down and Clark is back on solid ground, he seems a little wobbly but in otherwise good spirits.

“It basically feels like a gravitron,” he says, referring to the spinning, nausea-inducing rides that became a staple of county fairs in the 1980s.

The team from the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences is using this machine as one step in an experiment that seeks to recreate an experience that few people ever have: The shock of going from one gravity environment, like space, to another, like the surface of Earth. In particular, the group is tackling what happens when astronauts return home, landing in their spacecrafts in the middle of a choppy ocean.

Disorientation and motion sickness have long been an underappreciated reality of space exploration, Lonner said. Surveys suggest that a majority of astronauts and cosmonauts have gotten sick during water landings—a relatively minor condition that could become dangerous if nauseous crew members suddenly have to respond to a disaster.

Addressing such motion sickness will become increasingly important as more people travel into space, and stay there for long, Lonner said. In recent lab experiments , the team discovered that virtual reality goggles might help keep astronauts grounded when they splash down in the ocean. This technology can provide people with calming images of a landscape to gaze at, similar to watching the horizon from the deck of a boat.

The team presented its results this month at NASA’s annual Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshop in Galveston, Texas.

“We’re increasing this whole bubble of space exploration,” Lonner said. “But people aren’t going to want to do that if they’re just going to be miserable when they get to microgravity and when they return to Earth.”

Adrift at sea

For the aerospace engineer, the question is a personal one—she can’t so much as crack a book open during car rides without getting queasy. According to one hypothesis, motion sickness like hers arises from a sort of mismatch between the body and brain.

“When you’re in a moving environment, your body senses your surroundings, but your brain also holds an expectation for what you should be sensing based on your past experiences,” Lonner said. “When those two things disagree for an extended period of time, you get motion sick.”

Woman sits strapped into heavy-duty chair wearing a virtual reality headset

Graduate student Taylor Lonner dons a virtual reality headset inside the Tilt-Translation Sled, a machine that, in experiments, can mimic the motion of ocean waves. (Credit: Taylor Lonner)

People in orange suits and helmets sit inside the cramped cockpit of a spacecraft

Engineers try out the cockpit of the Orion spacecraft, with a few porthole windows above their heads. (Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz)

Digital animation of trees in a forest with a few humans standing around

In experiments, virtual reality scenes of a forest seemed to help reduce the motion sickness from a simulated water landing. (Credit: Clark lab)

Unfortunately for astronauts, space is full of those kinds of contradictions. 

When humans first break free of Earth’s atmosphere, for example, their brains expect their bodies to experience a downward tug from gravity—conditions that don’t exist in space. As a result, roughly 60% to 80% of space travelers have experienced what scientists call “space motion sickness,” which can last for a few days or even longer. (Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov holds the dubious honor of being the first human to vomit in space when he lost his lunch inside the Vostok 2 spacecraft).

In separate research, Clark and his colleagues are exploring whether space explorers can reduce space motion sickness through simple exercises, such as careful tilts of the head.

But icky feelings may also emerge when astronauts come back to Earth. NASA is planning to send humans to the moon this decade aboard the Orion or Dragon spacecrafts. When Orion, in particular, returns to Earth, it will likely plop into the ocean somewhere off the coast of California. There, astronauts may bob up and down in the waves for as long as an hour while they wait for rescue.

It's not a pretty picture, Lonner said: “If you look at Orion and Dragon, there are only a few porthole windows that really aren’t sufficient for giving astronauts a fixed view of Earth.”

Walk in the forest

Back at CU Boulder, in a lab down the hall from the human centrifuge, Clark steps into a different machine. 

The metal cube painted blue is about the size of a small bedroom. It previously resided at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and is so big that the team had to bring it into the building in pieces, then put it back together on site.

Once Clark secures himself to a chair inside and shuts the door, the massive device rumbles to life and begins to move, sliding along a track on the floor. It swishes in a straight line from one end of the room to the other for several minutes.

“You feel like you’re getting rocked back and forth,” Clark says. 

In fact, it feels like being rocked back and forth by waves—the researchers programmed the sled’s motion by drawing on data from real buoys in the Pacific Ocean.

In one recent experiment, the team took a two-stage approach to simulating the motion sickness that comes from water landings: First, the group spun 30 human subjects for an hour in the centrifuge. That spinning mimics the disorientation astronauts experience when they suddenly transition from microgravity to the harshness of Earth’s gravity.

Next, the researchers rocked the subjects in the sled for as much as an hour. If that sounds like a recipe for nausea, Lonner said, it was.

But, she added, the team also gave each of the subjects a pair of virtual reality goggles to wear. Half of the subjects saw an image of a fixed white dot against a black background. But the other subjects received a much richer picture—a digital forest complete with a few cartoon humans for scale. Those forests also moved in tandem with the sled. When it slid or tilted, so did the trees and people.

“It’s like a virtual window,” Lonner said. 

It also did the trick. Lonner explained that if subjects experienced moderate symptoms of motion sickness for longer than two minutes, they exited the experiment. Only a third of the people wearing goggles showing just the white dot lasted for the entire hour in the sled. In contrast, nearly 80% of subjects watching the forest survived the ordeal.

A window opens

The researchers are working to build on their results, exploring, for example, whether adding more information to the forest scene can help reduce nausea even more. But they are optimistic that virtual reality could give astronauts returning to Earth a little relief.

Lonner sees the project as a way of opening space exploration up to more people—including people like her who get nauseous on airplanes. She’s even used some of the lessons from her research in her own life. 

“I realized that it’s worse when the window is closed, and I can’t see the clouds passing by,” Lonner said. “Now, I’ll always open the window to watch the clouds.”

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Pottawatamie County adopts new wind, solar ordinances

Council Bluffs, Iowa (WOWT) - Pottawattamie County is adopting new wind and solar laws. The county started considering new ordinances last August but was met with considerable community pushback .

The last time Pottawattamie County updated its regulations for wind turbines was in 2007 , and before Tuesday, the county had no regulations for solar farms.

Now, officials say the new regulations will keep up with the growing and evolving renewable energy industry and protect the people who live in the county.

Board Supervisor Susan Miller, along with the four other Pottawattamie elected officials, have been considering community input on wind and solar regulations for the past six months.

“We’ve come a long way with this one,” Miller said at Tuesday’s meeting, where the board made the final approval for the new regulations.

Matt Wyant, the county’s director of planning, was the person who made sure the county put pen to paper on community concerns.

“It was a great process hearing from the residents on both sides of the issue knowing that people were being engaged in the process,” Wyant said. “I think it’s just better protection for the county. It’s better protection for the land owners involved, and I think it’s still available for developers to meet if they choose to.”

The main changes the board approved include a three-mile buffer from small towns, parks and recreation sites, and the Council Bluffs airport. Setbacks now must be at least half-a-mile from a house.

Before the requirement was just under 0.2 miles. The new ordinance also requires a setback from property lines to be just over a quarter-mile.

The new rules also put limitations on how high turbines can be, which is no taller than 412 feet. That change, Wyant said, is a direct result of the community input.

The solar ordinances were not as controversial as the wind during this process. Wyant said the new solar regulations are in line with nearby Mills County and create a clear set of guidelines for developers to follow.

Both of these new ordinances will go into effect next Thursday.

Copyright 2024 WOWT. All rights reserved.

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The Space We Travel Through

When sea-faring nations began to explore new regions of the world, one of their biggest concerns in making the journey safely was how to cope with weather. They could harness the wind for power. They could rely on the Sun and the stars for navigation. They could build sturdy ships. But if a storm rose suddenly, they were at nature’s mercy.

More than five centuries later, our nation is once again on the cusp of exploring new worlds. And once again, one of our concerns about traveling long distances is the weather. Space weather.

While space is a vacuum – it’s not 100% empty. Particles, energy and magnetic fields travel through the void. Much of these emanate from the Sun’s corona, as part of a constant outward flow known as the solar wind -- which stretches well beyond the orbit of Neptune. There are also high energy particles or cosmic rays in the mix, which travel vast distances from dying stars or supernovae. Earth’s magnetic field and relatively thick atmosphere act as a shield against the most harmful forms of this radiation, but in space there is no such deterrent.

If we want to travel though this space, we need ways to protect our astronauts. These particles can affect our technology, tripping onboard electronics.

Dr. Yari Collado-Vega, Space Weather Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center notes, “We are working hard to forecast when these particles will be at their peak, such as during solar flares or coronal mass ejections.”

Acute exposure to these solar energetic particles is a serious concern for astronauts and instruments. Therefore, having a better understanding of when to expect solar activity is important for safely sending our astronauts and spacecraft through space. Ironically, such space weather activity can actually protect against another threat to astronauts: The Sun's activity can block dangerous cosmic rays coming from other stars, which are constantly present – illustrating the complexity of the system NASA tries to understand and mitigate for our space travelers.

Over time, sea captains learned when to sail their ships and when to stay in harbor, based on their accumulated knowledge of the weather. It’s more risky to be on the water in the Caribbean during hurricane season, and you’d want to consider avoiding the Northeast coast of America during the height of winter.

Dr. Collado-Vega says, “It’s very similar to what we’re doing today. We’re constantly developing and testing new models to predict space weather. And we’re constantly seeking new data to refine those models.”

A host of heliophysics missions observe space from a variety of vantage points, not unlike terrestrial weather sensors, which work in tandem to paint a bigger picture of our space environment. In August 2018, NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe to help us better understand the Sun’s activity, especially what drives the solar wind, and how energetic particles get accelerated. This data could be used to improve models of space weather forecasting – ultimately helping us find new and better ways to shield our spacecraft and protect our astronauts.

Whether it was the oceans ancient ships traveled through or the space we will one day travel through, we know this: keeping a watchful eye on the environment around us is key to ensuring safe passage.

For more information about what matter’s in space, visit science.nasa.gov .

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Solar Eclipse 2024: The Mental Floss Viewing Guide

A solar eclipse will darken skies over much of the United States on April 8, 2024, and if you want to catch it, you should start making preparations now. To see the total solar eclipse, you will need to travel to the path of totality . At the time of the last total solar eclipse over the U.S. in August 2017, Mental Floss spoke to Mitzi Adams, a heliophysicist at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, for everything you need to know about solar eclipses—from photographing the process, to why scientists study eclipses, to how animals react when day turns to night.

What Is a Total Solar Eclipse?

During a total solar eclipse , the moon moves between Earth and the sun and obscures the sun completely.

A total solar eclipse is made up of phases. First, there's initial contact, when the sun and moon first “touch.” This leads into the partial phase, when it looks like someone is taking increasingly large bites from the sun. Next is the actual eclipse itself, when the sun is totally covered by the moon. It lasts a very brief time, from a few seconds to just over two minutes, depending on where along the path of totality you view it. The sun passes through partial phases again as the moon continues on its way. During the total phase, when it is safe to briefly remove your eclipse glasses , behold the corona of the sun—wispy, revenant limbs of light reaching from a black hole in the sky. Stars and planets will be visible as day has turned to an eerie, ethereal night.

As the eclipse moves through its phases, Adams said, you'll notice that nature has no idea what's going on. “During the total phase when the light from the sun's photosphere is completely blocked, some animals react,” she told Mental Floss. “ Crickets start chirping. You’ll hear frogs . Birds will go to roost. Chickens will react the same way they do at sunset. All animals, including the human ones, react to eclipses in some way. The human reaction is typically, ‘Wow! Look at that!‘”

Where Is the 2024 Eclipse Path of Totality?

The 2024 solar eclipse has been dubbed the Great North American Eclipse because its path of totality—where day temporarily turns to night—stretches from the Pacific coast of Mexico, through the eastern half of the U.S., to eastern Canada. At approximately 11:07 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, the eclipse’s journey across the continent will begin at Mazatlan, Mexico, and follow a northeast direction through Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Finally, the eclipse will pass over New Brunswick and Newfoundland, Canada. You can find your closest location to the path of totality with this solar eclipse 2024 interactive map .

Total solar eclipses will occur near major U.S. cities during the afternoon of April 8, 2024, according to NASA’s predictions . The cities below will experience solar eclipses at these approximate times (this is not a complete list of all the cities that will see totality):

If you're not close to the path of totality, but you are somewhere east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States, you will see a partial solar eclipse (and that’s still really cool).

How to Watch the Solar Eclipse

During the partial phase of a total eclipse, you need to wear special solar eclipse glasses that protect your eyes from the sun. If you don't wear solar eclipse glasses, you won't be able to see anything that's happening because you are staring at the sun. More importantly, you will also be at risk for permanent eye damage from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

Eclipse glasses will not magnify the eclipse. You can, however, use a telescope or pair of binoculars if you want to get a closer look. You really need to know what you're doing, though, and if this is your first eclipse, ask yourself if it is worth fiddling with knobs during what might be a once-in-a-lifetime event. If you're going to use a telescope, Adams said, “the safest way is to have a special filter that will fit over the front of the telescope. The telescope could be a refractor or a reflector. Binoculars would also work, though you want either two filters, or one filter while you block the light over one side of the binocular pair. Any of these filters will fit over the front .”

The filters will be made of mylar or glass, she said, and warns that they must be specifically certified as safe for viewing the sun. “You do not want to use any kind of filter that will screw into an eyepiece because they will crack, and it doesn't take very long—just a couple of seconds—to build up the heat to crack the filter.”

If you want to view the sun up close during the partial phase of the eclipse, be on the lookout for sunspots, the darker areas seen on the surface of the sun. The current phase of the 11-year sunspot cycle suggests that there will be an good chance of seeing sunspots during the 2024 Great North American Eclipse.

Where to Get Solar Eclipse Glasses

If you are lucky enough to be in or near the 2024 eclipse’s path of totality, look for free or inexpensive eclipse glasses at public viewing events, libraries, museums, and state parks. Eclipse glasses can be found online as well, but beware of counterfeit products from overseas. The American Astronomical Society recommends buying eclipse glasses made in the U.S. from its list of vetted manufacturers that comply with the ISO 12312-2 international safety standard for solar filters.

The eyeglass retailer Warby Parker will also be giving away free eclipse glasses at all of its stores beginning April 1, 2024.

Can You Go Blind Looking at a Solar Eclipse?

There are a lot of mistaken beliefs about eclipses that should be put to rest. “One large misconception is that somehow going outside during the eclipse is dangerous—that there are somehow ‘eclipse rays’ that happen, and that the sun is more dangerous during an eclipse,” Adams said. “That's just not true. The light from the sun is exactly the same from an eclipse as when it’s not eclipsed.”

Likewise, staring at an eclipse when it is at totality will not make you go blind. In fact, during totality, you can take off your eclipse glasses and stare at the moon-concealed sun—but only when the sun is completely obscured by the moon, and even then, the organization Prevent Blindness recommends doing so with caution . You must put the glasses back on when the sun emerges from behind the moon after totality.

How to Photograph the Solar Eclipse

Nikon has provided a comprehensive guide to photographing the sun conventionally on a tripod as well as with a special telescope mount. The American Astronomical Society also has a useful set of pointers for how to preserve the moment. But the big thing to remember is to avoid using a flash (or a flashlight)—not for reasons related to photography, but because part of the wonder of the event is the day turning to night. Light pollution is already a problem for skywatching. The best photography advice might be to keep your camera at home and enjoy the total eclipse with your eyes safely behind a pair of eclipse glasses—not through a glass screen.

Why Are Solar Eclipses Important for Scientists?

“We want to learn as much about the sun as possible,” Adams said. “We’re trying to study from the core of sun all the way out to the corona, which is the outer layer of the sun's atmosphere. The eclipse will enable us to study the inner corona. We can actually build pictures of events on the sun from the photosphere, through the chromosphere, and into the corona.”

Scientists will combine the visible light images that they get from the eclipse with images from sources such as NASA‘s Solar Dynamics Observatory in orbit around Earth. The observatory views the sun in multiple wavelengths—mostly extreme ultraviolet—continuously, but it is unable to get the inner corona in visible light. “We can’t really study the full spectrum unless we’re using images from a solar eclipse,” Adams said.

2024 Eclipse Citizen Science Projects

NASA and its institutional partners have numerous eclipse-related citizen science projects if you’re interested in taking your observations to the next level. There's Citizen CATE , in which amateur astronomers across the country will use identical cameras and telescope equipment to take pictures of the sun's inner corona. The Eclipse Megamovie Project will use images and footage taken of the 2024 solar eclipse by citizen scientists across the country to stitch together a high-definition video of the eclipse. If you will be within the 2024 eclipse path of totality, you can sign up for Eclipse Soundscapes , a project that collects citizen scientists’ sound recordings of nature before, during, and after the eclipse to determine how “solar eclipses affect life on Earth.”

2024 Eclipse Travel Tips

Major U.S. cities in the 2024 eclipse path of totality include Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas; Indianapolis, Indiana; Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo and Rochester, New York; and Burlington, Vermont. The path of totality will also skirt Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal in Canada. Those who want to catch a glimpse of totality in these cities should book their flights, hotel rooms, and rental cars post-haste. But there are plenty of other travel destination options: the path of totality crosses nearly the entire widths of Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio, and Maine, so smaller-scale hotels and AirBnBs away from big cities may be a good bet. Don't forget the possibility of camping in state or regional parks and public lands , many of which may be holding their own eclipse-related viewing events.

Traffic and parking may also pose problems, so make sure your gas tank is full, you have food and water in the car , and for the love of all that is good and holy, insist that the kids try to use the bathroom before you get on the highway. It might be a very long, very slow drive even for short distances.

The good news: Most of the communities along the path of totality are pulling out all the stops. While you wait for the (very brief) show, there will be plenty of entertainment , and NASA will have beachhead presence across the country with science demonstrations for kids and adults alike. Just make sure everyone has their own pair of eclipse glasses.

A version of this story was published in 2017; it has been updated for 2024.

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This article was originally published on mentalfloss.com as Solar Eclipse 2024: The Mental Floss Viewing Guide .

Solar Eclipse 2024: The Mental Floss Viewing Guide

Widespread solar storm struck spacecraft near the sun, Earth and even Mars

In 2021, a solar storm was recorded by multiple different spacecraft and the results tell quite the story.

Space weather may seem like a tale from a galaxy far, far away — but when solar storms impact us on Earth, we're directly affected. These storms are what give rise to the Northern Lights , for instance. They can even lead to temporary disruptions in our communications systems and power grid. From these solar flares , we can learn so much — and a recent release from NASA shares how, back in 2021, one in particular had a brilliant story to go with it. As space agencies continue to send astronauts into our planet's orbit, and start planning for journeys even beyond,  ways of monitoring solar storms and their impacts will become increasingly critical. These storms have the potential to harm humans, satellites and spacecraft; a release from 2023 by the European Space Agency discussed how, for the first time , such energetic particles were simultaneously observed on the surfaces of the Earth, moon and Mars after a solar outburst. This raised important concerns.

"Space radiation can create a real danger to our exploration throughout the Solar System ," Colin Wilson, ExoMars TGO project scientist, shared in the ESA's release . "Measurements of high-level radiation events by robotic missions is critical to prepare for long-duration crewed missions." 

In an era with a historic number of satellites and other instruments roaming through the great unknown, NASA's heliophysics missions use spacecraft to get a deeper understanding of space phenomena and tell the stories of what happens after solar events when particles are released into space. A recent article from NASA shares a perfect example of the efforts being made to study the impacts from solar storms originating from the light of all lights: The sun . This solar outburst happened on April 17, 2021, and although these storms are not uncommon, with this specific event, the storm was so widespread that six spacecraft at different locations and positions felt the blast.  

Related: Powerful solar flare unleashes colossal plasma plume, sparks radio blackouts across South Pacific (video)

High-speed protons and electrons , also known as solar energetic particles (SEPs), were observed by spacecraft not only between the sun and Earth , but as far away as between Earth and Mars! 

According to NASA, this was the first time something like this has happened — we now have a whole different perspective on solar storms using data from multiple spacecraft versus a single one that can only provide a local insight.  

Let's use a famous Marvel hero as an example: Thor creates a solar storm to wipe out a bunch of bad guys, generating lots of SEPs to send out into space. He knows, however, that there are enemies on all sides. So, he makes sure to create different balls of these SEPs that can go in all different directions, covering a much wider territory than a single beam can. With more "eyes" on a single event, we can better understand all of the different types of hazards that can come from one solar storm, which can sometimes pose a threat across a larger playing field.

"SEPs can harm our technology, such as satellites, and disrupt GPS ," Nina Dresing of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Turku in Finland said in a statement . "Also, humans in space or even on airplanes on polar routes can suffer harmful radiation during strong SEP events."

Dresing and her team conducted further research from the event to learn where the SEPs came from, how the particles revved up to dangerous speeds, and when they made contact with each spacecraft. The conclusions were as follows (plotted on the diagram below.) The closest to the blast (which took the blunt of the blow) was the BepiColombo spacecraft, a joint mission of the European Space Agency and JAXA . BepiColombo is en route to Mercury . The second hardest hit by particles was NASA's Parker Solar Probe , which sits extremely close to the sun. That was followed by ESA's Solar Orbiter. Parker and the Solar Orbiter were on opposing sides of the flare when it happened. 

A little closer to home, NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory ( STEREO ) spacecraft, STEREO-A, the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and NASA's Wind spacecraft were hit by the event. Finally, the farthest away and final spacecraft to detect particles from the blast were Mars orbiters: NASA’s MAVEN and ESA's Mars Express.

By determining their differences in location from around the sun and noting how many electrons and protons were observed by each spacecraft, Dresing and her team were able to paint a much clearer picture of what happened from the solar ejection.

"Multiple sources are likely contributing to this event, explaining its wide distribution," Georgia de Nolfo, a team member and heliophysics research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in the statement. "Also, it appears that, for this event, protons and electrons may come from different sources. This is not the first time that people have conjectured that electrons and protons have had different sources for their acceleration, this measurement was unique in that the multiple perspectives enabled scientists to separate the different processes better, to confirm that electrons and protons may originate from different processes."

—  How to observe the sun safely (and what to look for)  

—  Wild solar weather is causing satellites to fall. It's going to get worse.

—  Satellites can disappear in major solar storms and it could take weeks to find them

As we know, this will not be the last time an event like this occurs, and the more research we can do, the better understanding we can have of what happens with space weather , and the more we can cautiously explore the final frontier. Future studies that stem from these results will cover a wider terrain of other phenomena; they'll be conducted by instruments including the Geospace Dynamics Constellation (GDC) , SunRISE , PUNCH , and HelioSwarm .

The study was published last year in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

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Meredith Garofalo

Meredith is a regional Murrow award-winning Certified Broadcast Meteorologist and science/space correspondent. She most recently was a Freelance Meteorologist for NY 1 in New York City & the 19 First Alert Weather Team in Cleveland. A self-described "Rocket Girl," Meredith's personal and professional work has drawn recognition over the last decade, including the inaugural Valparaiso University Alumni Association First Decade Achievement Award, two special reports in News 12's Climate Special "Saving Our Shores" that won a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award, multiple Fair Media Council Folio & Press Club of Long Island awards for meteorology & reporting, and a Long Island Business News & NYC TV Week "40 Under 40" Award.

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