The Sun
The name of the event for when the Moon blocks the Sun.
What is a solar eclipse?
The celestial body that space weather is mostly caused by
What is the Sun?
When astronauts travel outside of Earth's magnetic shield, they are exposed to higher doses of this.
What is radiation?
In November 2025, The NASA Heliophysics Division sent 2 twin spacecraft to monitor the impacts of space weather on this planet
What is Mars?
This orbiting laboratory has been continuously inhabited by humans since 2000.
What is the International Space Station (ISS)?
This is the light and heat we get from the Sun
What is energy?
Galileo's name for the Northern Lights
What is the Aurora Borealis?
These bursts of electromagnetic radiation from the sun can disrupt radio communication on Earth within minutes
What are solar flares?
This orbit, located about 1 million miles from Earth towards the Sun, is home to several heliophysics missions that constantly monitor the solar wind before it hits Earth.
What is the Sun-Earth L1 point / Lagrange Point 1?
First American to fly to space in 1961
Who is Alan Shepard?
The outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere
What is the corona?
The name for the Earth's protective magnetic field
What is the magnetosphere?
This major global industry can experience delays, rerouting, increased fuel costs, and communication outages during strong solar storms, especially when polar routes become unusable.
What is the commercial aviation industry?
Orbiting between 100 and 1200 miles above the Earth, spacecraft in this region can study our planet's upper atmosphere and the impacts of space weather.
What is low Earth orbit?
This country is a partner with the United States, Europe, Russia, and Japan on the International Space Station.
What is Canada?
This is the scientific word for the study of the Sun and its effects on space and planetary bodies.
What is heliophysics?
The name for the vast, bubble-like region of space surrounding the Sun created by the solar wind
What is the heliosphere?
Severe space weather can inducce electrical currents that overload these ground-based systems, potentially causing widespread blackouts in extreme cases.
What are power grids?
Launched in 1977, these twin spacecraft became the first human-made objects to enter interstellar space.
What are the Voyager spacecraft?
This critical end‑of‑mission event involves safely returning astronauts to Earth, where recovery teams secure the capsule after it lands in the ocean.
What is crew splashdown?
The distance between the Sun and the Earth
What is 93 million miles / 150 million kilometers / 1AU?
This type of storm occurs when energetic solar particles disturb Earth's magnetosphere, often lighting up the sky with auroras.
What is a geomagnetic storm?
When solar storms disrupt GPS accuracy, farmers may struggle to plan efficiently when using this type of farming equipment.
What is precision agriculture equipment?
This device aboard many heliophysics missions blocks direct sunlight so that faint solar structures, like coronal mass ejections, become visible.
What is a coronagraph?
This spacecraft was designed to take astronauts deeper into space than ever before.
What is Orion?