Latest STEREO Stories

Scientists from Boston University's Center for Space Physics reported today that NASA satellites designed to view the escaping atmosphere of the Sun have also recorded evidence of gas escaping from the planet Mercury. The scientists reported these findings at the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) meeting in Rome, Italy this week.The STEREO mission has two spacecraft, in orbits just inside and outside the earth's orbit around the Sun, and thus increasingly ahead and behind the earth...

Solar storms don't always travel in a straight line. But once they start heading in our direction, they can accelerate rapidly, gathering steam for a harder hit on Earth's magnetic field.So say researchers who have been using data from NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft to unravel the 3D structure of solar storms. Their findings were presented in the Sept. 21 issue of Nature Communications. "This really surprised us," says co-author Peter Gallagher of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland....

Scientists now say that a massive eruption from the sun in April might have caused the Galaxy 15 satellite to become a "zombie."According to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the explosion of plasma and magnetic energy occurred on April 3 and was observed by NASA's sun-watching STEREO spacecraft.  The NRL released new images of the solar storm last week. NRL officials said that the storm appears to have disabled Intelsat's Galaxy 15 communications satellite.  The...

Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that's new to human history. To make preparations, authorities in Washington DC are holding a meeting: The Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Press Club on June 8th. Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division, explains what it's all about:"The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has...

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 26 /PRNewswire/ -- The immense volume of data generated by the suite of instruments on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) requires new tools for efficient identifying and accessing data that is most relevant to research investigations. Scientists at the Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory of the Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Palo Alto have developed the Heliophysics Events Knowledgebase (HEK) to fill this need. The HEK system...

Solar physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, have captured for the first time the collision of a comet with the sun.Using instruments aboard NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft, four post-doctoral fellows at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory were able to track the comet as it approached the sun and estimate an approximate time and place of impact. STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory), launched in 2006, consists of identical spacecraft orbiting the sun, one ahead of...

SSTL has today announced that it will launch the NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X satellites on behalf of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) by a Dnepr launch vehicle from Yasny, Russia on October 29th, 2010.NigeriaSat-2 is the most advanced small satellite ever to be launched, defining new standards in Earth observation and avionics. The spacecraft, which is based upon SSTL's flagship SSTL-300i platform, will be used primarily for resource management and mapping of the...

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Spectacular "first light" images and data from the three state-of-the art instruments on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) were unveiled yesterday morning by NASA. The SDO spacecraft was launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on February 11, 2010. (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100422/SF91131) Two of the SDO instruments were built at the Solar and Astrophysics...

Scientists from the University of Leicester have used observations from NASA's STEREO and ACE satellites to come up with more accurate predictions of when blasts of solar wind will reach Earth, Venus and Mars.  Anthony Williams will present the results at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow on Wednesday April 14th.We have recently been experiencing an unusually quiet and long-lasting solar minimum, and solar storms caused by Coronal Mass Ejections have been scarce.  Despite...

When NASA's satellite operators need accurate, real-time space-weather information, they turn to the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) of the Space Weather Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The CCMC's newest and most advanced space-weather science tool is the Integrated Space Weather Analysis (iSWA) system.The iSWA is a robust, integrated system provides information about space weather conditions past, present, and future and, unlike many other...