A solar storm that jammed radar and radio communications at the height of the Cold War could have led to a disastrous military conflict if not for the U.S. Air Force's budding efforts to monitor the sun's activity, a new ...
Space Exploration
Aug 9, 2016
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New findings based on a year's worth of observations from NASA's Van Allen Probes have revealed that the ring current - an electrical current carried by energetic ions that encircles our planet - behaves in a much different ...
Space Exploration
May 19, 2016
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Space weather scientist Liz MacDonald has seen auroras more than five times in her life, but it was the aurora she didn't see that affected her the most.
Space Exploration
Mar 7, 2016
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57
The shape of the two electron swarms 600 miles to more than 25,000 miles from the Earth's surface, known as the Van Allen Belts, could be quite different than has been believed for decades, according to a new study of data ...
Space Exploration
Feb 24, 2016
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About 600 miles from Earth's surface is the first of two donut-shaped electron swarms, known as the Van Allen Belts, or the radiation belts. Understanding the shape and size of the belts, which can shrink and swell in response ...
Space Exploration
Jan 19, 2016
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When the sun hurls a billion tons of high-energy particles and magnetic fields into space at speeds of more than a million miles per hour and the "space weather" conditions are right, the resulting geomagnetic storm at Earth ...
Space Exploration
Aug 11, 2015
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A pair of solar eruptions over the weekend have unleashed a severe geomagnetic storm that could disrupt power and communications on Earth, US officials said Tuesday.
Space Exploration
Mar 17, 2015
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345
SpaceX called off Sunday's planned launch of a deep-space observatory—and a revolutionary rocket-landing attempt—after a critical radar-tracking system failed.
Space Exploration
Feb 9, 2015
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545
Magnetic reconnection can trigger geomagnetic storms that disrupt cell phone service, damage satellites and black out power grids. But how reconnection, in which the magnetic field lines in plasma snap apart and violently ...
Space Exploration
Sep 10, 2014
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After emitting its first significant solar flares since June 2013 earlier in the week, the sun continued to produce mid-level and significant solar flares on Oct. 27 and Oct. 28, 2013.
Space Exploration
Oct 28, 2013
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