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How Can I See the Northern Lights? We Asked a NASA Expert: Episode 54
2 min read

How can I see the northern lights? To see the northern lights, you need to be in the right place at the right time. Auroras are the result of charged particles and magnetism from the Sun called space weather dancing…

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NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Team Wins 2024 Collier Trophy
5 min read

The innovative team of engineers and scientists from NASA, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and more than 40 other partner organizations across the country that created the Parker Solar Probe mission has been awarded the 2024…

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NASA’s EZIE Launches on Mission to Study Earth’s Electrojets
3 min read

Under the nighttime California sky, NASA’s EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) mission launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 11:43 p.m. PDT on March 14. Taking off from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara, the EZIE mission’s trio of small satellites…

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NASA Atmospheric Wave-Studying Mission Releases Data from First 3,000 Orbits
4 min read

Following the 3,000th orbit of NASA’s AWE (Atmospheric Waves Experiment) aboard the International Space Station, researchers publicly released the mission’s first trove of scientific data, crucial to investigate how and why subtle changes in Earth’s atmosphere cause disturbances, as well…

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NASA’s Record-Shattering, Theory-Breaking MMS Mission Turns 10
5 min read

Since its launch on March 12, 2015, NASA’s MMS, or Magnetospheric Multiscale, mission has been rewriting our understanding of a key physical process that is important across the universe, from black holes to the Sun to Earth’s protective magnetic field.…

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Cosmic Mapmaker: NASA’s SPHEREx Space Telescope Ready to Launch
6 min read

Editor’s note: This story was updated March 11, 2025, to reflect a new target launch date and time. NASA’s latest space observatory is targeting a March 11 liftoff, and the agency’s PUNCH heliophysics mission is sharing a ride. Here’s what…

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NASA’s EZIE Launching to Study Magnetic Fingerprints of Earth’s Aurora
5 min read

High above Earth’s poles, intense electrical currents called electrojets flow through the upper atmosphere when auroras glow in the sky. These auroral electrojets push about a million amps of electrical charge around the poles every second. They can create some…

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NASA’s PUNCH Mission to Revolutionize Our View of Solar Wind 
6 min read

Earth is immersed in material streaming from the Sun. This stream, called the solar wind, is washing over our planet, causing breathtaking auroras, impacting satellites and astronauts in space, and even affecting ground-based infrastructure.  NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the…

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NASA CubeSat Finds New Radiation Belts After May 2024 Solar Storm
5 min read

Key Points The largest solar storm in two decades hit Earth in May 2024. For several days, wave after wave of high-energy charged particles from the Sun rocked the planet. Brilliant auroras engulfed the skies, and some GPS communications were…

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Bright Comet’s Tail Dazzles in Images from ESA/NASA SOHO Spacecraft
2 min read

From Jan. 11 to 15, 2025, a bright comet surged through images from the ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft. Called C/2024 G3 (ATLAS), the comet made its closest pass to the Sun, or perihelion, on…

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