# Solar Flares – NASA

Official National Aeronautics and Space Administration Website

- Two NASA Sounding Rockets Launch from Alaska During Solar Flare Two Black Brant IX sounding rockets launched from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, April 17, 2024, during an M-class solar flare for NASA&#8217;s sounding rocket solar flare campaign. The first rocket launched at 2:13 p.m. local Alaska time for the Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager (FOXSI) mission that used X-ray vision to observe [&#8230;]
- Flashes on the Sun Could Help Scientists Predict Solar Flares In the blazing upper atmosphere of the Sun, a team of scientists have found new clues that could help predict when and where the Sun’s next flare might explode. Using data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, researchers from NorthWest Research Associates, or NWRA, identified small signals in the upper layers of the solar [&#8230;]
- NASA’s MinXSS Instrument CubeSat Launches to Study Sun’s Flares The Miniature X-Ray Solar Spectrometer 3, or MinXSS-3, successfully launched on the InspireSat-1 small satellite at 7:29 p.m. EST on&#160;Feb. 13, 2022. Also known as the Dual Aperture X-ray Solar Spectrometer, or DAXSS, it is the third of three NASA-funded MinXSS CubeSats. It will spend up to a year in low-Earth orbit studying X-rays coming [&#8230;]
- NASA Sun Data Helps New Model Predict Big Solar Flares Using data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, scientists have developed a new model that successfully predicted seven of the Sun’s biggest flares from the last solar cycle, out of a set of nine. With more development, the model could be used to one day inform forecasts of these intense bursts of solar radiation. [&#8230;]
- NASA Retires Prolific Solar Observatory After 16 Years Every morning for the past 16 years, solar physicist Säm Krucker sat down at his desk to check the latest data from NASA’s RHESSI. Had the solar observatory seen a flare overnight? If there was a new flare, Krucker, RHESSI principal investigator at University of California, Berkeley, since 2013, would pore over the data, each [&#8230;]
- NASA’s SDO Sees Sun Emit Mid-Level Flare Oct. 1 The Sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 8:13 p.m. EDT on Oct. 1, 2015.&#160;NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured an image of the event. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however [&#8230;]
- Monitoring Solar Activity with SDO Intern at computer At times, the sun erupts, hurling a magnetic cloud of solar material toward Earth. Racing at thousands of miles per second, and hundreds of times larger than the sun, this cloud of solar particles can cause a magnetic storm near Earth, disrupting satellite communications and—in worse case scenarios—overloading power transformers. Here on [&#8230;]
- Bright Points in Sun’s Atmosphere Mark Patterns Deep In Its Interior Like a balloon bobbing along in the air while tied to a child’s hand, a tracer has been found in the sun’s atmosphere to help track the flow of material coursing underneath the sun’s surface. New research that uses data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, to track bright points in the solar atmosphere [&#8230;]
- NASA’s Fermi Detects the Highest-Energy Light From a Solar Flare During a powerful solar blast on March 7, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the highest-energy light ever associated with an eruption on the sun. The discovery heralds Fermi’s new role as a solar observatory, a powerful new tool for understanding solar outbursts during the sun’s maximum period of activity. A solar flare is an [&#8230;]
- What is a Solar Flare? The most powerful flare measured with modern methods was in 2003, during the last solar maximum, and it was so powerful that it overloaded the sensors measuring it. The sensors cut out at X28.