These ejections are bundles of magnetic fields and particles that originate from the Sun. They can travel at speeds up to 1,242 miles per second (2,000 kilometers per second) and may cause geomagnetic storms. They create beautiful aurora displays ' like the northern lights you can sometimes see in the skies ' but can also disrupt satellite operations, shut down the electric grid and expose astronauts aboard future crewed missions to the Moon and Mars to lethal doses of radiation. I'm a heliophysicist and space weather expert, and my team is leading the development of a next-generation satellite constellation called SWIFT, which is designed to predict potentially dangerous space weather events in advance. Our goal is to forecast extreme space weather more accurately and earlier. In September 1859, the most powerful recorded space weather event, known as the Carrington event, caused fires in North America and Europe by supercharging telegraph lines. In August 1972, another...
learn more
