When solar storms pounded Earth during Halloween in 2003, scientists were eager to measure their effects. But new research shows one satellite was seeing "ghost" particles that probably weren't real.
satellites
Posted inNews
NASA Selects Launch Vehicles for Small Satellites
Miniature satellites offer new opportunities for science, commerce, and education. With new launch vehicles, these satellites will fly as primary payloads rather than hitchhiking on bigger missions.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Protecting Communications Satellites from Space Weather
A recent analysis of proprietary telecommunications data identifies a potential source of anomalous satellite component performance, and what can be done to prevent this from happening in the future.
Posted inNews
U.S. Launches 13 New Minisatellites
Tiny CubeSat satellites made of one or more cube-like modules roughly the size of coffee mugs offer a compact and inexpensive way to conduct research and other activities in space.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Predicting Space Weather on a Satellite Superhighway
Scientists combined 82 satellite years of data to create a more comprehensive model of how plasma behaves in a region of Earth's magnetosphere with heavy spacecraft traffic.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Hacking a Climate Satellite to See Beneath the Ocean's Surface
When NASA launched its CALIPSO spacecraft, the space agency did not intend to estimate phytoplankton populations.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
New Insights into Currents in Earth's Magnetic Field
Multisatellite missions give scientists a more complete view of the intense currents that bounce back and forth along our planet's magnetic field lines.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Do All These Weather Satellites Really Improve Forecasts?
A team of researchers put an array of space- and ground-based weather instruments to the test and found that the common weather balloon is irreplaceable for forecasting rainfall.
Posted inScience Updates
Changing of the Guard: Satellite Will Warn Earth of Solar Storms
This summer, Earth gets a new guardian—the Deep Space Climate Observatory—to help warn astronauts and operators of critical planetary infrastructure about the Sun's raging magnetic storms.
Posted inScience Updates
Earthquake Monitoring Gets Boost from New Satellite
Europe's Sentinel-1A spacecraft and its extraordinary images of slip from the South Napa earthquake herald a new era of space-based surveillance of faults.