Solar wind as a research area focuses on the plasma outflow from the solar corona and its interaction with the heliosphere and planetary environments. It encompasses characterization of its composition, velocity distributions, turbulence, and magnetic structure, including fast and slow streams, coronal mass ejections, and associated shock waves. The field integrates in situ spacecraft measurements, remote sensing, and magnetohydrodynamic and kinetic modeling to study acceleration and heating mechanisms, magnetic reconnection, and wave–particle interactions. Solar wind research is central to understanding heliophysics, space weather forecasting, particle transport, and the coupling between solar activity and magnetospheres throughout the solar system.
Our sun constantly releases a stream of high-speed charged particles, known as the solar wind. Unlike Earth, Mars does not have a strong global magnetic field to shield its atmosphere from this flow. As a result, the solar ...
Planetary Sciences
10 hours ago
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Each time the moon covers the sun during a total solar eclipse—darkening daytime skies and briefly revealing the sun's ethereal outer atmosphere, the corona—it presents new opportunities to better understand our star and ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 28, 2026
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The moon has been bathed in solar wind for billions of years, but the two hemispheres are struck by solar wind of different speeds and energies.
Planetary Sciences
Jul 19, 2026
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Where does the solar system end and interstellar space begin? That's a question scientists have been working to answer using spacecraft traveling beyond the sun's influence. A team of researchers from the Southwest Research ...
Astronomy
Jul 7, 2026
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A researcher at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, has published a new study in The Astrophysical Journal suggesting that tiny charged dust grains near the sun may significantly ...
Astronomy
Jul 1, 2026
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A new Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) study based on data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has uncovered insights into why the solar wind gradually slows as it moves toward the edge of the solar system and the boundary ...
Astronomy
Jun 29, 2026
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A University of Iowa-led physics team has detailed the extreme expansion of a magnetic cloud that originated from a huge, gaseous explosion on the sun. In a new study, the researchers describe the inflated magnetic cloud ...
Astronomy
Jun 24, 2026
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Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists are using a solar wind forecasting method combined with analytic and numerical heliosphere models to find out where the first plasma boundary of the outer heliosphere lies as ...
Planetary Sciences
Jun 22, 2026
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The proton sharks showed up on a Friday. In a routine data calibration meeting for NASA's Parker Solar Probe in 2020, a small group of scientists were scrolling through visualizations of their data showing solar winds. Suddenly, ...
Astronomy
May 28, 2026
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Before Smile can begin studying how Earth responds to the streams of particles and bursts of radiation from the sun, the spacecraft had to complete an extraordinary journey here on Earth.
Space Exploration
May 18, 2026
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