The RF observatories, SOHO, Inouye, BioSentinel, Proba-3, Parker Solar Probe, SPHEREx, PUNCH, Carruthers, Helios, and SunRISE study solar radio flares, the solar atmosphere, the influence of solar radiation on various objects, and map the solar magnetic field from the outer corona to interplanetary space.
Understanding space weather, finding minerals, and assessing the impact of earthquakes on the Earth’s magnetic field are all possible using technologies used in geomagnetic observatories. Currently, 16 such observatories operate in Russia under the management of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). They are located in various regions of the country, including Moscow, Leningrad, Yaroslavl, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, and Irkutsk Oblasts, the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Khabarovsk Krai, Magadan Oblast, and Kamchatka Krai.
Geomagnetic observatories are scientific facilities that continuously record and measure the Earth’s magnetic field. They can be used to study magnetic storms, space weather, and, in general, processes related to the Sun’s influence on our planet. Geomagnetic activity indices are calculated using magnetic observatory data. These indices indicate the degree of solar wind’s influence on the Earth’s magnetosphere.
The main instrument installed in geomagnetic observatories is a scalar magnetometer. It measures the magnitude of the Earth’s magnetic field as a whole. This device, like others, requires a separate enclosure to isolate it from possible anthropogenic sources of magnetic fluctuations. This sensor contains a special liquid—for example, kerosene or an aqueous alcohol solution. A coil is wound around the outside of the flask containing this solution. When a current is passed through it, a fairly strong magnetic field is created. This field acts on the sensor and causes the magnetic moments of the particles in the liquid to align with this field. Then the current is turned off. However, the field does not disappear immediately. However, the vector of this field begins to precess, meaning its axis constantly changes its position in space, now around the vector of the Earth’s magnetic field.
The researchers also use a vector magnetometer in their work. It can measure the direction of the magnetic field in different directions. The device operates using a so-called fluxgate—a metal sensor made of a magnetic iron-nickel alloy. When the magnetic field is measured, the alloy’s state changes, helping to record the changes.
Another fluxgate sensor is attached to the telescope of a theodolite, an instrument for measuring angles in the horizontal and vertical planes. To ensure uninterrupted measurements, this instrument is demagnetized: all original parts are replaced with non-magnetic ones. Every few days, specialists use this device to measure the magnetic declination angle—it can be thought of as the angle of inclination of the magnetic field between the compass needle and the actual geographic position of North—as well as the magnetic tilt angle—the tilt of the compass needle to the horizon. These angles must be measured to correct measurements already made by another instrument.
The NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft captured this image of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light on February 24, 2015, during a three-hour period during which our nearest star ejected a coronal mass along with a portion of a solar filament. While some of the filaments fell back into the Sun, a significant portion escaped into space in a bright cloud of particles.
Launched in December 1995, the joint NASA-ESA SOHO mission was designed to study the Sun from the inside. Although its mission was only scheduled for 1998, it continued to collect data, expanding scientists’ understanding of our nearest star and making numerous new discoveries, including the detection of over 5,000 comets.
On February 24, 2015, the Sun ejected a coronal mass along with a portion of its solar filament over the course of three hours. NASA
NASA continues to study the Sun using various spacecraft. These include NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA’s Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1).
From 2017 to 2019, KX Systems partnered with Frontier Development Lab through NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California. Working with NASA scientists, KX applied kdb+’s capabilities to exoplanet searches and space weather forecasting—areas that could be improved by AI models. One of the questions Frontier Development Lab sought to answer was whether kdb+ could predict the space weather that causes auroras, thereby predicting when GPS satellites might experience solar-induced signal disruptions.
By importing multiple datasets tracking the ionosphere, solar activity, and Earth’s magnetic field and applying machine learning algorithms to them, researchers at the Advanced Research Laboratory were able to predict destructive events up to 24 hours in advance.
While this was an academic application of AI, KX Systems says some of the results of this work have been used in commercial products, as there are similarities between AI models developed to identify patterns in satellite signal loss and models that predict maintenance needs for industrial manufacturing equipment.
NASA partnerships enable artificial intelligence to predict solar events.
Auroras illuminate the night sky above cities, but the same solar activity that causes auroras can disrupt satellites critical to Earth’s systems. Artificial intelligence may be the solution to the problem of predicting these solar events and alerting satellite operators.
While auroras are a beautiful sight on Earth, the solar activity that causes them can cause serious damage to space infrastructure such as satellites. Using artificial intelligence to predict these damaging solar events was one of KX’s collaborative efforts with FDL. Sebastian Saarloos
The Advanced Research Laboratory (ARL) in Mountain View, California, is an ongoing partnership between NASA and commercial artificial intelligence companies to apply advanced machine learning techniques to problems important to the agency and beyond. Since 2016, the ARL has been applying AI for NASA in the fields of planetary protection, heliophysics, Earth science, medicine, and lunar exploration.
In collaboration with KX Systems, Frontier Development Lab sought to utilize proven software in an innovative way. The company’s flagship data analytics software, kdb+, is typically used in the financial industry to track rapidly changing market trends, but the company was exploring its potential applications in space.
KX Systems, a division of FD Technologies plc, is a technology company offering database management and analytics software to clients who need to make decisions quickly. Although KX was founded in 1993, its AI-based business has grown significantly, and the company notes that its collaboration with NASA has accelerated the development of some of its capabilities.
Since the 1950s, solar physicists have been mapping magnetic fields on the solar surface. However, efforts to map magnetic fields in regions above the surface, such as the corona, have long been underway, as these are where solar winds and space weather phenomena such as flares and coronal mass ejections originate. The Inouye Solar Telescope, located near the summit of Haleakala on the island of Maui in Hawaii, now offers the capability to address this need.
The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Inouye Solar Telescope, operated by the National Solar Observatory (NSO), has mapped the magnetic field strength in the sun’s corona, the outer part of the sun’s atmosphere that can be seen during a total solar eclipse.
Important work from the Inouye Solar Telescope was published in the journal Science Advances in September 2024, promising to improve our understanding of the Sun’s atmosphere and how its changing conditions affect Earth’s technologically dependent society.
The Inouye Solar Telescope is the largest solar telescope in the world. Observations of magnetic fields by this telescope are aimed at understanding the Sun’s explosive behavior and are one of its primary focuses. Inouye’s 4-meter mirror provides “unprecedented images from the Sun’s surface to the lower solar atmosphere,” according to a statement from NSO. Focusing on small variations in observations, the instrument suite collects images from the Sun’s surface to the lower solar atmosphere. The Inouye Solar Telescope reveals objects three times smaller than anything scientists have seen on the Sun before, and does so several times per second. The instruments and optical unit produce not only impressive images but also possess incredible spectroscopic capabilities. Observing the specific fingerprints of hundreds of atoms and ions on the Sun’s surface and atmosphere is expected to help researchers elucidate the dynamic nature of the Sun’s behavior.
Typically, the solar corona—a region a million times fainter than the solar disk—can only be seen during a total solar eclipse, when most of the sun’s light is blocked and Earth’s sky darkens. However, Inouye uses a technique called coronagraphy to create artificial eclipses, meaning it can detect extremely weak polarized signals—a billion times fainter than the solar disk.
Just as detailed maps of Earth’s surface and atmosphere have enabled more accurate weather forecasting, this complete map of magnetic fields in the solar corona will help scientists better predict solar storms and space weather and advance solar physics.
NASA’s BioSentinel system studies solar radiation. BioSentinel, a small satellite roughly the size of a cereal box, is currently orbiting the Sun at a distance of over 30 million miles from Earth. A preliminary analysis of the collected data shows that while extreme geomagnetic storms—storms that disrupt Earth’s magnetic field—occur, they were classified as moderate solar radiation storms, meaning they did not significantly increase the amount of hazardous solar particles.
Consequently, such storms did not pose a serious threat to terrestrial life, even if they were unprotected, like BioSentinel. These measurements provide useful information for scientists trying to understand how solar radiation storms propagate through space and where their impact—and potential impact on life beyond Earth—is most intense.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft captured this image of a solar flare on May 11, 2024. The image shows a fragment of ultraviolet radiation that releases extremely hot material in flares. NASA/SDO
BioSentinel’s original mission was to study yeast samples in deep space. Although these yeast samples are no longer living organisms, BioSentinel has adapted and continues to be an innovative platform for studying the potential impact of deep space conditions on life beyond the protection of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere. The spacecraft’s biosensor instrument collects radiation data in deep space. More than a year and a half after its launch in November 2022, BioSentinel is moving away from Earth, providing increasingly valuable data to scientists.
“Although the biological portion of the BioSentinel mission concluded several months after launch, we believe the mission’s continuation has significant scientific value,” the researchers reported. “The fact that the CubeSat continues to operate and that we can maintain communication with it highlights the potential use of the spacecraft and many of its subsystems and components for future long-term missions beyond low-Earth orbit.”
An illustration of NASA’s BioSentinel spacecraft entering heliocentric orbit. BioSentinel collected data during the geomagnetic storm that hit Earth in May 2024 to learn more about the effects of radiation in deep space. NASA/Daniel Rutter
The Proba-3 mission is so ambitious that its successful completion requires more than one spacecraft. For Proba-3’s Coronagraph spacecraft to observe the Sun’s tenuous atmosphere, its solar disk-carrying Occulter spacecraft must block the hot solar disk. This means Proba-3’s Occulter is constantly pointed at the Sun, making it a valuable scientific research platform in its own right.
Therefore, a special instrument has been installed on the Sun-facing side of the Occulter telescope that will continuously measure the total energy output of the Sun, known as total solar irradiance – a key parameter for climate research, the ESA press service reports.
Orbit Proba-3. ESA
The shoebox-sized Digital Absolute Radiometer DARA was provided to the mission by the Physical Meteorological Observatory Davos (PMOD) in Switzerland.
“Researchers used to talk about the ‘solar constant,’ but in reality, it’s constantly changing slightly,” explains Wolfgang Finsterle, principal investigator of the DARA project at PMOD. “And it’s crucial to monitor total solar radiation, as it’s the primary source of energy for the Earth’s surface. It accounts for approximately 99.978% of all available energy on Earth, including stored solar energy stored in coal and oil. It determines all dynamic processes of the Earth’s climate, so even the smallest changes have enormous implications.”
Located in the mountains, PMOD has been studying global solar radiation for over a century, initially using ground-based instruments and then, since the 1970s, deploying space-based radiometers to obtain a continuous dataset. The World Meteorological Organization has designated PMOD as the World Radiation Centre for the calibration of radiation measurements for UN global monitoring programs.
Sample 3. ESA
Wolfgang adds: “Total solar irradiance varies according to the 11-year solar cycle, and one of the most obvious ways to detect long-term energy drift is to compare total solar irradiance between successive solar minima… This requires a long data series, ideally obtained from multiple instruments, as the sensitivity of individual radiometers will be reduced by the solar radiation’s intense ultraviolet radiation, to which they are constantly exposed. Any reduction in sensitivity occurs very gradually: for example, the radiometer on board the ESA-NASA SOHO solar observatory, launched in 1995, is still functioning satisfactorily.”
DARA tool. ESA
The basic operating principle of DARA is simple. The radiometer contains a 5 mm diameter cavity made of black-painted silver, which has a low thermal emissivity. Sunlight heats the cavity’s interior for 15 seconds, after which a shutter automatically closes at its entrance. For the next 15 seconds, electrical heating maintains the cavity’s previous temperature, and the energy required to maintain this temperature is extrapolated into a unit of total solar radiation, which is expressed in watts per square meter.
ESA’s SOHO Solar Observatory
This process continues throughout the life of the device – the actuator design used in DARA has been tested to open and close millions of times in the PMOD vacuum chamber.
“DARA is an improved version of previous radiometer designs, with an optimized resonator design to minimize unwanted stray light and a multi-channel measurement system for self-calibration,” adds Wolfgang. “This generation of instruments also features a fully digital control loop, allowing for experimentation with more frequent observations.”
As Werner Schmutz of PMOD, who led the development, notes, two versions of this radiometer have already been tested: “A compact version called CLARA was installed on the Norwegian cubesat satellite NorSat-1 in 2017 and remains operational to this day, while the previous version, DARA, is used on board the Chinese meteorological satellite FY-3E, launched in 2021. Therefore, we are very confident in this design, which can operate whenever the Proba-3 eclipse is directed at the Sun with an accuracy of half a degree.”
DARA is undergoing ground testing. ESA
The main difference between the DARA radiometer onboard Proba-3 and previous models is its highly elliptical orbit, which will be located at an altitude of 60,000 km above the Earth’s surface. DARA can automatically adapt to slight changes in the solar disk’s size depending on its distance, which is also caused by the Earth’s annual elliptical orbit around the Sun. All the radiometer needs is its position in space, and data collection compensates for this shift.
ESA’s Proba-3 Occulter and Coronagraph spacecraft
Operations teams confirmed that NASA’s Sun Touch mission successfully completed a record-breaking approach to the solar surface on December 24, 2024. Breaking its previous record by flying just 3.8 million miles above the sun’s surface, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe spacecraft slashed through the solar atmosphere at an incredible 430,000 miles per hour—faster than any human-made object has ever traveled.
A signal received late on December 26, 2024, confirmed that the spacecraft had successfully completed its rendezvous and was operating normally, NASA’s press service reported.
This flyby, the first of many planned at such a distance, will allow the spacecraft to conduct unprecedented scientific measurements that could change our understanding of the Sun. Flying so close to the Sun is a historic moment in humanity’s first mission to the star.
“Flying so close to the Sun is a historic moment in humanity’s first mission to a star,” said Niki Fox, manager of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “By studying the Sun up close, we can better understand its impact on our entire solar system, including the technologies we use every day on Earth and in space, and learn about the workings of stars in the universe, which will help us in our search for habitable worlds beyond our home planet.”
This sketch image shows Parker Solar Probe poised to enter the sun’s corona. NASA/Johns Hopkins Lab/Ben Smith
The Parker Solar Probe spacecraft has been preparing for this moment for the past six years. Launched in 2018, the spacecraft made seven flybys of Venus to gravitationally approach the Sun. After its final flyby on November 6, 2024, the spacecraft reached its optimal orbit. This oval orbit ensures the spacecraft reaches the ideal distance from the Sun every three months—close enough to study the Sun’s mysterious processes, but not too close to be overwhelmed by solar heat and destructive radiation. The spacecraft will remain in this orbit for the remainder of its primary mission.
“Parker Solar Probe is tackling one of the most extreme environments in space and exceeding all expectations,” said Noor Rawafi, Parker Solar Probe’s project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which designed, built, and operates the spacecraft from its base in Laurel, Maryland. “This mission ushers in a new golden era of space exploration, bringing us closer than ever to unlocking the Sun’s deepest and most enduring mysteries.”
The spacecraft’s record-breaking 3.8 million-mile journey may seem vast, but in cosmic terms, it’s incredibly small. If the solar system were shrunk to the size of a football field, the Parker Solar Probe would be just four yards from the end zone—close enough to pass within the Sun’s tenuous outer atmosphere, known as the corona. NASA/NPS
Near the Sun, the spacecraft uses a carbon foam shield to protect itself from the extremely high temperatures in the upper solar atmosphere, known as the corona, which can exceed 1 million degrees Fahrenheit. The shield was designed to withstand temperatures up to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit—hot enough to melt steel—while maintaining a comfortable room temperature for the instruments located behind it. In the hot but thin corona, the spacecraft’s shield is expected to reach temperatures of 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Being able to get a spacecraft this close to the Sun is a monumental achievement,” said John Wirtzburger, systems engineer for the Parker Solar Probe mission at APL. “It’s a challenge the scientific community has wanted to solve since 1958, and has spent decades refining technologies to make it possible.”
By flying through the sun’s corona, Parker Solar Probe can take measurements that will help scientists better understand how the region heats up to such temperatures, trace the origin of the solar wind (the constant stream of material leaving the sun), and discover how energetic particles are accelerated to half the speed of light.
“These data are incredibly important to the scientific community because they give us another perspective,” said Kelly Correc, a program scientist at NASA Headquarters and a heliophysicist who worked on one of the mission’s instruments. “By providing direct evidence of what’s happening in the solar atmosphere, Parker Solar Probe has revolutionized our understanding of the Sun.”
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe experienced its record-breaking closest approach to the Sun’s surface on December 24, 2024. Breaking its previous record by passing just 3.8 million miles above the Sun’s surface, the probe hurtled through the Sun’s atmosphere at 430,000 miles per hour—faster than any human-made object has ever traveled. NASA
Previous flybys have already helped scientists better understand the Sun. When the spacecraft first entered the solar atmosphere in 2021, it discovered that the outer boundary of the corona was pockmarked with spikes and troughs, contrary to expectations. Parker Solar Probe also identified the origin of important zigzag-shaped structures in the solar wind, called “crossroads,” on the Sun’s visible surface—the photosphere.
Since its first pass by the Sun, the spacecraft has been spending increasingly more time in the corona, where most of the most important physical processes occur.
“We now understand the nature of the solar wind and how it accelerates as it moves away from the Sun,” said Adam Szabo, a research scientist for the Parker Solar Probe mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This close encounter will allow us to obtain more data to understand how it accelerates at greater distances.”
The Parker Solar Probe spacecraft also made discoveries in the inner solar system. Observations revealed how giant solar explosions called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) suck up dust as they sweep through the solar system, while other observations revealed unexpected data about solar energetic particles. Flybys of Venus documented the planet’s natural radio emissions from its atmosphere, as well as the first complete image of its orbital dust ring.
On December 13, 2025, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe spacecraft made its 26th close approach to the Sun, once again reaching a record distance of 3.8 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) from the solar surface. The spacecraft also reached a record speed of 430,000 miles per hour (687,000 km/h)—a mark that, like the distance, was set and subsequently repeated during close approaches on December 24, 2024, March 22, June 19, and September 16, 2025. Parker Solar Probe will remain in this orbit around the Sun and continue to conduct observations. Next steps for the mission in late 2026 and beyond are officially under review by NASA.
During this close encounter with the Sun, which took place from December 8 to 18, four scientific instruments on the Parker spacecraft collected data from the solar atmosphere, or corona. This flyby, the fifth at this distance and speed, allows the spacecraft to conduct unprecedented measurements of the solar wind and solar activity during the active phase of the Sun’s 11-year cycle.
Parker’s observations of the solar wind and solar phenomena such as coronal mass ejections and flare aftermaths are crucial to advancing humanity’s understanding of the Sun and the phenomena that lead to high-energy space weather events that pose hazards to astronauts, satellites, air travel, and even power grids on Earth. Understanding the fundamental physics of space weather will enable more reliable predictions of astronaut safety on future deep-space missions to the Moon and Mars.
The Parker Solar Probe spacecraft was developed as part of NASA’s Living With a Star (LWS) program to study aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly impact life and society. The LWS program is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory manages the Parker Solar Probe project for NASA, designing, building, and operating the mission.
This artist’s rendering depicts the boundary of the solar atmosphere known as the Alfvén surface. This region appears to shift from peak-shaped to foamy, marking the point of no return for material escaping the Sun’s magnetic pull. Deep dives into the Alfvén surface by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, combined with solar wind measurements from other spacecraft, have allowed scientists to track the evolution of this structure throughout the solar cycle and map this previously unexplored boundary. CfA/Melissa Weiss
Using NASA’s Parker Spacecraft, astronomers also created the first continuous two-dimensional maps of the outer boundary of the Sun’s atmosphere. At this boundary, which scientists call the Alfvén surface, solar material escapes the Sun, transforming into the solar wind—a million-mile-per-hour stream of particles that spreads in all directions throughout the Solar System, colliding with planets, spacecraft, and everything else in its path.
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Results from the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft’s SWEAP (Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons) instrument, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, show that this boundary becomes larger, rougher, and has sharper peaks as the Sun becomes more active during its 11-year solar cycle.
Scientists are using other solar observatories, such as Solar Orbiter (a NASA/ESA spacecraft) and Wind (a NASA spacecraft), to begin mapping the boundary between the Sun’s atmosphere and the solar wind. However, Parker Solar Probe is approaching the Sun closer than any other spacecraft in history—so close that it repeatedly crosses this boundary, providing direct confirmation of the maps and showing how the boundary changes with solar activity.
Knowing the precise location of this critical boundary could help scientists answer important questions about the Sun’s outer atmosphere, known as the corona, and help us understand how solar activity affects the rest of the solar system, including life on Earth and our technology.
SPHEREx, short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, launched at 8:10 p.m. PDT on March 11, 2025, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Along with SPHEREx, the Falcon 9 rocket carried four small satellites that are part of the agency’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which will study how the Sun’s outer atmosphere is converted into solar wind.
“All of NASA’s science activities are interconnected, and launching SPHEREx and PUNCH on the same rocket doubles the opportunity to conduct incredible science in space,” said Niki Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “I congratulate both mission teams on exploring the cosmos—from distant galaxies to our nearest star. I look forward to collecting data in the coming years.”
Ground controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the SPHEREx project, established contact with the space observatory at 9:31 PM PDT. The observatory began its two-year primary mission after a roughly month-long checkout period during which engineers and scientists will ensure the spacecraft is functioning properly.
The PUNCH satellites successfully separated approximately 53 minutes after launch, and ground controllers established contact with all four PUNCH spacecraft. A 90-day commissioning period then began, during which the four satellites were placed into the correct orbit and their instruments were calibrated as a single “virtual instrument” before scientists began analyzing solar wind images.
Both missions are designed to operate in low-Earth, Sun-synchronous orbit above the day-night line (also known as the terminator), ensuring the Sun always remains in the same position relative to the spacecraft. This is necessary so that SPHEREx can protect its telescope from sunlight and heat (both of which would interfere with observations), and PUNCH can have an unobstructed view in all directions around the Sun.
On March 11, 2025, NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) observatory and PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) satellites launched from Vandenberg Air Force Station in California on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
To achieve its ambitious science goals, the SPHEREx project creates a three-dimensional map of the entire sky every six months, providing a broad overview that complements the work of space telescopes that observe smaller areas of the sky in more detail, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope.
The mission uses spectroscopy to measure the distances to 450 million galaxies in the nearby Universe. Their large-scale distribution was slightly affected by an event known as inflation, which occurred nearly 14 billion years ago and caused the Universe to expand by a trillion- to trillion-fold in a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. The mission is also measuring the total luminosity of all galaxies in the Universe, which will provide new insights into how galaxies formed and evolved over cosmic time.
Spectroscopy can also determine the composition of cosmic objects, and the SPHEREx project will explore our home galaxy for hidden reserves of frozen water ice and other molecules, such as carbon dioxide, that are essential for life as we know it.
NASA’s PUNCH spacecraft will conduct global, three-dimensional observations of the inner solar system and the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, to understand how its mass and energy are converted into the solar wind—a stream of charged particles extending outward from the Sun. The mission will also study the formation and evolution of space weather phenomena, such as coronal mass ejections, which can create storms of energetic particles that pose a hazard to spacecraft and astronauts.
“The space between the planets isn’t an empty void. It’s filled with turbulent solar wind that pummels Earth,” said Craig DeForest, the mission’s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute. “The PUNCH mission aims to answer fundamental questions about how stars like our Sun create stellar winds and how they trigger dangerous space weather events right here on Earth.”
The SPHEREx mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and spacecraft. Scientific analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the United States, two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. The data will be processed and archived at IPAC at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), which manages JPL for NASA. The mission’s principal investigator is at Caltech and holds a joint appointment at JPL. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available in the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive.
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) leads the PUNCH mission and built the four spacecraft and the Wide Field Imager instruments at its headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. The Narrow Field Imager was built by the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. Mission management is conducted from SwRI’s offices in Boulder, Colorado, and is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
In November 2025, NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory received its first images from space, revealing rare views of Earth and the Moon in ultraviolet light. The images, taken on November 17—several months before the start of the mission’s science phase—confirm the spacecraft’s health and hint at the incredible views that await us in the future.
The initial images include two images acquired by the Carruthers wide-angle imager and two images acquired by the narrow-angle imager. Each imager captured two distinct views: one showing a broad spectrum of far-ultraviolet light, and the other showing light from Earth’s geocorona.
These initial images were taken with short five-minute exposures—just long enough to confirm the instrument was working properly. During the main science phase, Carruthers will take 30-minute exposures, which will reveal even fainter features of the geocorona and track how Earth’s outer atmosphere responds to changing solar radiation.
These four images represent “first light” for the Carruthers Observatory’s geocorona mission. The images were acquired on November 17, 2025, from a location near Lagrange point 1 of the Sun-Earth system using the spacecraft’s wide-field (left column) and narrow-field (right column) imaging instruments in the far ultraviolet (top row) and in the wavelength range of light emitted by atomic hydrogen known as Lyman-alpha (bottom row). Earth is the larger, bright circle in the middle of each image; the Moon is the smaller circle below and to the left of it. The fuzzy “halo” around Earth in the images in the bottom row is the geocorona: ultraviolet light emitted by Earth’s exosphere, or outermost layer of the atmosphere. The lunar surface still glows in Lyman-alpha because its rocky surface reflects all wavelengths of sunlight—one reason why it’s important to compare Lyman-alpha images with those taken through a wide ultraviolet filter. Far-ultraviolet images taken with a narrow beam also captured two background stars, whose surface temperatures must be roughly twice that of our Sun to be so bright in this range of wavelengths. NASA/Carruthers Geocorona Observatory
On December 10, 1974, NASA launched Helios 1, the first of two spacecraft designed for close solar observation. As part of one of the largest international programs of the time, the Federal Republic of Germany (also known as West Germany) provided the spacecraft, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, had overall responsibility for the U.S. participation, and NASA’s Lewis Research Center (now Glenn Center) in Cleveland provided the launch vehicle.
Equipped with 10 instruments, Helios 1 made its first approach to the Sun on March 15, 1975, flying closer and faster than any previous spacecraft. Helios 2, launched in 1976, flew even closer. Both spacecraft significantly exceeded their expected 18-month lifetimes, providing unprecedented data from unique vantage points.
The fully assembled Helios-1 spacecraft is ready for launch. NASA
The West German company Messerchmitt-Bölkow-Blohm built two Helios probes—the first non-Soviet and non-American spacecraft launched into heliocentric orbit—for the West German space agency DFVLR (now DLR). Each Helios probe, weighing 815 pounds, carried 10 American and West German instruments totaling 158 pounds to study the Sun and its surroundings. The instruments included high-energy particle detectors for measuring the solar wind, magnetometers for studying the Sun’s magnetic field and variations in electric and magnetic waves, and micrometeorite detectors. After activation and checkout, operators at the German control center near Munich controlled the spacecraft and collected initial data. To evenly distribute solar radiation, the spacecraft rotated on its axis once per second, and optical mirrors on its surface reflected most of the heat.
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Workers place the Helios solar probe into its payload fairing. NASA
Helios 1 was launched on December 10, 1974, at 2:11 a.m. ET from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (now the U.S. Space Force) aboard a Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket. It was the first successful flight of the rocket, then the most powerful in the world, following the failure of the Centaur upper stage during the rocket’s maiden launch on February 11, 1974. The successful launch of Helios 1 gave the Titan IIIE-Centaur the confidence it needed to launch the Viking orbiters and landers to Mars in 1976, and the Mariner spacecraft (later renamed Voyager) in 1977 to begin their journeys around the outer solar system. The Centaur upper stage placed Helios 1 into a 190-day solar orbit, with its perihelion, or closest point to the Sun, inside the orbit of Mercury. Engineers activated 10 of the spacecraft’s instruments within days of launch, and on January 16, 1975, the spacecraft was declared fully operational. On March 15, Helios 1 reached its closest approach to the Sun at 28.9 million miles, closer than any other spacecraft had ever reached—the previous record belonged to Mariner 10 during its three Mercury encounters. Helios 1 also set a speed record, traveling at 148,000 miles per hour at perihelion. Temperatures in some parts of the spacecraft reached 261 degrees Fahrenheit, but the instruments continued to function without issue. During the second perihelion on September 21, temperatures reached 270 degrees Fahrenheit, affecting the operation of some instruments. Helios-1 continued to operate and transmit useful data until its primary and backup receivers failed, and its high-performance antenna stopped pointing toward Earth. Ground controllers shut down the spacecraft on February 18, 1985, and the last communication was established on February 10, 1986.
The Helios 1 spacecraft is mounted on a Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket at Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (now Space Force) in Florida.
The Helios 2 spacecraft was launched on January 15, 1976, and followed a trajectory similar to its predecessor, but approaching the Sun even closer. On April 17, it approached to within 27 million miles of the Sun, traveling at a new record speed of 150,000 mph. At this distance, the spacecraft received 10% more solar heat than its predecessor. On March 3, 1980, Helios 2’s downlink transmitter failed, preventing further usable data from the spacecraft. On January 7, 1981, controllers shut it down. Scientists compared data from Helios’ instruments with similar data collected by other spacecraft, such as the Explorers 47 and 50 interplanetary monitoring platforms in Earth orbit, the Pioneer solar orbiters, and Pioneer 10 and 11 in the outer Solar System. In addition to observing the Sun, Helios 1 and 2 studied the dust and ion tails of comets C/1975V1 West, C/1978H1 Meier, and C/1979Y1 Bradfield. The information obtained by the Helios probes significantly expanded our knowledge of the Sun and its environment and raised new questions that future spacecraft operating from unique vantage points will attempt to answer.
NASA’s illustration of the Helios probe’s flight with all its booms deployed.
The joint ESA/NASA Ulysses mission studied the Sun from above its poles. Launched by the space shuttle Discovery on mission STS-41 on October 6, 1990, Ulysses used Jupiter’s gravity to lift it out of the ecliptic plane and fly over the Sun’s south polar region from June to November 1994, and then over the north polar region from June to September 1995. Ulysses continued its unique exploration during multiple polar flybys until June 30, 2009, nearly 19 years after launch and more than four times longer than originally planned. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, launched on August 12, 2018, has made increasingly close flybys of the Sun, including a flyby through its corona, breaking the distance record set by Helios 2. Parker Solar Probe reached its first perihelion at a distance of 15 million miles on November 5, 2018, and its closest approach to the Sun at a distance of just 3.86 million miles, or just 4.5 percent of the distance between the Sun and Earth, is scheduled for December 24, 2024. ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft launched on February 10, 2020, and began science operations in November 2021. It carries 10 instruments, including cameras that have returned the highest-resolution images of the Sun, including its polar regions, from a distance of up to 26 million miles.
Illustration of the spacecraft Wheeliss over the solar pole. NASA
An illustration of Parker Solar Probe during its closest approach to the Sun. NASA
ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft observes the Sun. NASA
The SunRISE mission will study solar radio flares and map the Sun’s magnetic field from the outer corona to interplanetary space. Solar radio flares occur when the enormous amounts of energy stored in the Sun’s magnetic field accelerate particles to high speeds.
These energetic particles can spread throughout the solar system, where they can impact spacecraft beyond the protective zone of Earth’s magnetic field. Understanding the mechanisms that generate these flares will improve our understanding of the impact of solar radiation on the space environment and, in turn, help ensure better protection for astronauts and satellites.
NASA plans to launch its Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) mission in the summer of 2026. This heliophysics mission will launch as a booster rocket aboard a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket, sponsored by the U.S. Space Systems Command.
Solar radio flares can reach Earth shortly before they emit potentially dangerous particle emissions. The SunRISE mission has the unique ability to image the flare’s approximate location and the direction of energetic particle travel, which could help space weather forecasters better understand the path of an impending radiation event and predict its impact.
NASA’s SunRISE project consists of six small satellites, pictured left, lined up in a clean room with their solar panels deployed. They will fly in formation, as shown in the artist’s concept image on the right, acting as one large radio telescope in low-Earth orbit. Space Dynamics Laboratory/Allison Bills (photo); NASA/JPL-Caltech
The SunRISE satellite, comprised of six small satellites, each about the size of a toaster, will act as a single large radio telescope approximately 10 kilometers wide, transmitting data to Earth via NASA’s Deep Space Network. The SunRISE team will use the precise timing and position information provided by the individual small satellites to combine data from a virtual radio telescope, a technique known as interferometry. SunRISE observes the Sun in radio bands absorbed by the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere, a region known as the ionosphere. From space, SunRISE can conduct scientific research inaccessible to ground-based radio telescopes.
The SunRISE mission will complement other NASA heliophysics missions, such as the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory, the Parker Solar Probe, and the Solar Orbiter satellite, an international collaboration between ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA.
NASA’s SunRISE spacecraft is a mission managed by the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. These missions are part of the Explorers program, managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Science operations for the mission are conducted by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, which also provides the science operations center, and project management is provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, which also provides the mission control center. The SunRISE spacecraft was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Utah.
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