Space Weather Living History: Dr. Ernie Hildner

Show | Grades 6-12+
In this 2013 interview, Dr. Ernie Hildner reflects on his extensive career in solar physics, which includes serving as the Chief of the Solar Physics branch at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and spending 19 years as the Director of NOAA’s Space Environment Center (now the Space Weather Prediction Center). He discusses the scientific discoveries, technological advancements, and administrative milestones that transformed space weather from a niche research area into a vital operational service.
Dr. Hildner’s early research focused on solar prominences, but his involvement as an experiment scientist on the Skylab coronagraph in the 1970s was a major turning point. By using a disk to block the sun's direct light (creating an artificial eclipse in space), the Skylab team was the first to directly observe and verify Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). Skylab's X-ray telescopes also revealed "coronal holes" for the first time. Hildner describes these as areas where the sun's magnetic field lines open straight out into space (comparing it to the "part in your hair"). Instead of trapping the hot solar atmosphere, these open fields act like "fire hoses," rapidly streaming material into space and causing geomagnetic storms on Earth days later. Prior to Skylab, NOAA's daily solar flare and storm predictions were highly crude. Skylab's well-funded operations led to a worldwide network of observatories that monitored the Sun in real time, drastically improving space weather forecasting and fundamentally shifting NASA's culture regarding mission planning. Hildner highlights that space weather becomes crucial for astronaut safety. While Earth's magnetic field protects low-earth orbit, lunar and future Mars missions require deep understanding of solar radiation hazards. He names several technological and scientific milestones. He also stresses that organizing the scientific community was just as important as the research itself. Dr. Hildner concludes by emphasizing the mutually beneficial, tight-knit relationship between NASA (research and data tracking), the NSF (funding and research), and NOAA (daily operations and forecasting), which ultimately provides tangible, protective benefits to society and taxpayers.

Credit: NASA via grant NNX11AJ61G

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