Space Weather The New ‘Weather’ of a Technological Society

The April 2026 GRAA Luncheon speaker was Dr. Antti A. Pulkkinen, the Director of the NASA Office of JPL Management and Oversight (NOJMO). NOJMO is the NASA Headquarters on-site government organization at JPL. Dr. Pulkkinen previously served as Director of the Heliophysics Science Division at Goddard and as the Director of Goddard’s Space Weather Research Center. His presentation, entitled “Space Weather: The New ‘Weather’ of a Technological Society” explained space weather in everyday terms and showed how solar activity travels from the Sun to Earth and throughout our solar system. Modern society runs on invisible threads: satellites, GPS timing, wireless communication, and electric power. Space weather is the “weather” that can tug on all of them, and it also paints the sky with breathtaking auroras when solar activity is high. Powered by the Sun, space weather includes eruptions and variations in solar output that change the radiation and magnetic environment around Earth and throughout the solar system. When strong events arrive, they can disturb satellite electronics, degrade GPS accuracy, interrupt radio communications, raise radiation exposure for astronauts and high-altitude flights, and —during extreme storms — stress power grids and other critical infrastructure to the point of collapse.

The three top goals of Heliophysics research, as described in the last decadal survey are: the Fundamental Physical Properties, meaning our scientific understanding about the physical processes that operate throughout the heliophysics domain; Linking between Physical Properties and Fundamental Physics Research, which is understanding how those fundamental processes work (e.g. how the solar wind gets transported throughout the entire solar system); and Improving the Understanding of Hazards to our Infrastructure and Humans in Space. Two thirds of the work of conducting heliophysics science is fundamental research and one third is focused on societal impacts.

Heliophysics is studied across a range of domains, from the sun, where the solar corona and coronal mass eruptions are unleashed, through the heliospheric domain, where these flows coming from the sun get transported throughout the entire solar system, to the Geospace domain, where these flows interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere and magnetic field and can trigger secondary processes such as auroras. The Parker Solar Probe is working in the heliospheric domain, making the closest approach within 9 solar radii to the Sun this summer, collecting observations about the physical processes that are triggered by solar eruptions. Heliophysics also studies the fundamental physical processes, such as magnetic reconnection, where magnetic field lines break and reconnect, releasing stored magnetic energy as kinetic energy, heat, and particle acceleration. NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission lead by Goddard consists of four identical spacecraft launched in March 2015 to study magnetic reconnection.

Heliophysics research provides an understanding of how the sun affects our planet. NASA’s Geospace Dynamics Constellation (GDC) is a strategic mission designed to study Earth’s upper atmosphere – the ionosphere-thermosphere system – by measuring how it responds to energy from the sun and magnetosphere. Goddard leads GDC and was competitively selected to build many of its instruments. The Northern Lights used to be a scary thing to see but nowadays have become an entertainment activity: in some of the northern European locations, companies take tourists on Northern Light tours. The same energetic particles that ignite the auroras can also deposit electric charge on the surface of spacecraft potentially causing discharges that harm the electronics. During major space weather storms, some airline operators need to reroute their flights to fly through regions where they still have communications. Magnetic storms can impact power grids to create large electric currents which may cause regional electrical blackouts.

One key focus of Space Weather is the radiation exposure hazard for astronauts in the Artemis program where astronauts will travel to the Moon and Mars outside the protective magnetic shield of the Earth’s radiation belts. Goddard’s Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office constantly monitors and reports on the space through which the astronauts are traveling. It supported the Artemis II mission to monitor for solar outbursts to provide sufficient warning to the crew so they could seek shelter from high radiation exposure.

Dr. Pulkkinen explained how we measure space weather conditions in real time, and discussed what NASA is doing — through missions, models, and partnerships – to advance space weather forecasting and to support safer, more reliable technology on Earth and safer human exploration beyond it. technologies that we became knowledgeable of space weather effects and how to mitigate them.

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