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Category: satellites

NOAA’s Space Weather Mission: Protecting Artemis II Astronauts and Society

For the majority of its orbit, the moon remains outside Earth’s magnetic field and is directly exposed to the full force of the solar wind and energetic solar particles. Artemis II astronauts will therefore spend time outside this naturally occurring protective shield. Any overlap between periods of heightened solar activity and time spent beyond Earth’s magnetospheric protection could pose significant radiation risks to the crew.

NASA relies on operational space weather forecasts and warnings from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). As the nation’s official around-the-clock space weather forecasting authority, SWPC provides direct, real-time support to human spaceflight missions. Observations from NOAA’s GOES satellites and the SOLAR-1 observatory at Lagrange point 1 will provide important measurements of solar wind speed, magnetic field orientation, and the flow of hazardous, high-energy particles. These observations allow SWPC to issue timely warnings if radiation levels approach thresholds that could affect astronaut safety. During the Artemis II mission, NOAA forecasters will continuously monitor solar wind conditions and evaluate any solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or solar energetic particle events that may occur.

The Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI), Extreme Ultraviolet and X-Ray Irradiance Sensors (EXIS), Space Environment In-Situ Suite (SEISS), and Magnetometer (MAG) are specialized instruments onboard the GOES-R Series satellites that measure solar activity and changes in Earth’s magnetic field. Additionally, the Compact Coronagraph (CCOR-1) onboard GOES-19 further enhances the detection of CMEs by providing continuous real-time monitoring of the sun’s corona, improving both measurement quality and warning lead time.

Unexplained sky flashes from the 1950s: Independent analysis supports their existence

Historical observations from an observatory in Germany have now independently verified evidence for brief, mysterious flashes of light in the night sky, first picked up by an American astronomical survey in the 1950s. Through fresh analysis of a German survey from the same period, independent researcher Ivo Busko, a now-retired developer at NASA, has uncovered striking new support for these puzzling signals. The results have been published as a preprint on arXiv.

In 2019, an international team of astronomers launched the VASCO Project, aiming to identify unusual phenomena hidden within vast archives of historical data. In particular, their work focused on astronomical transients: objects that suddenly appear in the sky in some images, but vanish in subsequent observations.

An especially exciting result emerged in 2025, when researchers analyzed photographic plates captured as part of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey. Carried out in California throughout the 1950s, this ambitious program produced nearly 2,000 images of the night sky using long-exposure plates. Within these images, the team found clear evidence of transients with strange appearance and behavior, captured at a time that predates the launch of any human-made satellites.

Space launches are changing the chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere, studies warn. Here’s what can be done

Look up on a clear night and you’ll see the streaks of our new space age. What you don’t see is the growing fallout for the atmosphere that keeps us alive.

A wave of satellite launches and reentries is changing the chemistry and physics of the middle and upper atmosphere.

Studies warn of ozone depletion, stratospheric heating and new metal aerosols from burning spacecraft. The pace is accelerating fast and unless we redesign how we use and retire satellites, we risk swapping one environmental problem (congestion in Earth orbit from too many spacecraft) for another (an atmosphere seeded with rocket soot and satellite ash).

Holistic space observation: the shift from SSA to SDA

Recent reporting on SpaceX’s proposal to deploy up to one million satellites in low Earth orbit — paired with a vision of AI-enabled, autonomous orbital infrastructure — marks a decisive moment for the space community. Regardless of whether these numbers ultimately materialize, the direction is unmistakable: space is moving toward unprecedented scale, autonomy and strategic importance.

That reality demands a fundamental reassessment of what space awareness really means.

For decades, space situational awareness (SSA) focused on orbital mechanics: where an object is, where it will be and whether it might collide with something else. That model is now insufficient. Satellites are no longer passive nodes governed primarily by physics; they are software-defined, networked systems deeply integrated with terrestrial cyber infrastructure, global supply chains and increasingly AI-driven decision loops.

‘Miracle’: Europe reconnects with lost spacecraft

The European Space Agency announced Thursday it has re-established communication with a spacecraft that is part of its Proba-3 mission, after losing contact with the satellite a month ago.

Proba-3, which launched on a two-year mission in 2024, uses two spacecraft flying in precise formation to simulate a solar eclipse more than 60,000 kilometers (37,000 miles) above Earth.

Scientists have used this delicate dance to get a rare glimpse of the sun’s little-known outer atmosphere, which is called the corona.

‘Mini earthquakes’ turn tiny chips into radio signal powerhouses

From GPS satellites to mobile networks, modern technology relies on ultra-precise radio signals. Engineers have long tried to generate them on chips using interactions between light and sound, but the effect was too weak. University of Twente researchers now show in a paper published in Nature Photonics that a thin glass layer creates “mini-earthquake” surface acoustic waves, which make the effect more than 200 times stronger. This enables ultra-pure signals and record-sharp filters on a device thousands of times smaller.

Every time you make a phone call, your signal is filtered out of a crowded radio spectrum using radio frequency filters. These components let through only the frequencies you want and block everything else. The sharper the filter, the cleaner the call. The same principle applies in radar, satellite navigation and future wireless networks like 6G.

Globular cluster NGC 5824 is embedded in a dark matter halo, study suggests

Using data from the Magellan Clay telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), astronomers have investigated a galactic globular cluster known as NGC 5824. Results of the new study, available in a paper published March 5 on the arXiv pre-print server, suggest that the cluster is embedded in a dark matter halo.

NGC 5,824 is an old globular cluster (GC) located some 104,000 light years away in the Milky Way’s outer halo. It has a mass of about 1 million solar masses, an age of 12.8 billion years and is the second brightest globular cluster of the outer halo clusters. NGC 5,824 is known to have a diffuse stellar envelope that extends beyond its tidal radius and symmetrically surrounds the cluster.

Given that the origin of the stars in this envelope and whether they remain gravitationally bound to the cluster center is still unclear, a team of astronomers led by Paula B. Díaz of the University of Chile decided to investigate NGC 5,824 by analyzing the data from the survey of the Milky Way outer halo satellites, based on the images acquired by CFHT and the Magellan Clay telescope. The study was complemented by data from ESA’s Gaia satellite.

A 100-solar-mass black hole merger ripples spacetime, and may flash in gamma rays

An international team from China and Italy has reported a possible cosmic encore to the landmark 2017 multi-messenger discovery. In November 2024, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observatories detected gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger, designated S241125n. Remarkably, just seconds later, satellites recorded a short gamma-ray burst (GRB) from the same region of the sky.

Typically, binary black hole mergers are not expected to produce electromagnetic counterparts. S241125n could be a very rare gravitational-wave event that has been linked to a GRB across multiple wavelengths, extending multi-messenger astronomy into a new regime. Although the association is not yet definitive and will require further follow-up, the probability of a chance coincidence appears low, making the result statistically intriguing while warranting caution.

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