The sun has become more and more active over the last 16 years, in a turn that surprised scientists and could affect space weather and technology on Earth, NASA announced this week.
A new research, conducted by two NASA scientists and published earlier in September in a the peer-reviewed Astrophysical Journal Letters, shows that solar activity has ramped up after 2008 — an unexpected reversal following a decades-long decline that was initially thought to foreshadow a period of historic inaction on the surface of the sun.
"All signs were pointing to the Sun going into a prolonged phase of low activity," Jamie Jasinski, a space plasma physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the study's lead author, said in a statement. "So it was a surprise to see that trend reversed. The Sun is slowly waking up."
An uptick in solar activity could influence space weather, potentially leading to more solar storms, solar flares and coronal mass ejections, the researchers found. Space weather patterns have the potential to directly impact spacecraft operations and the safety of astronauts, but they may be felt on Earth, too, as space weather can affect power grids, GPS systems and radio communication, according to NASA.
The downward trend was documented from the 1980s until 2008, when the space agency determined that the sun had reached its weakest point on record. The sun's action, or inaction, tends to fluctuate in 11-year cycles, according to NASA, although some patterns draw on longer.
Earth is currently in Solar Cycle 25, which began in 2020. The last cycle maintained an average length of 11 years and was the weakest solar cycle to occur in a century, according to the National Weather Service. Scientists thought the sun would stay in what they dubbed "deep solar minimum," believing that the stretch of quietness from the sun would continue, eventually leading to a new phase of record low activity.
"But then the trend of declining solar wind ended," Jasinski said in NASA's announcement.
His study, co-authored by Marco Velli, a fellow researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, instead tracked increasing bursts of solar plasma and stronger magnetic field measurements throughout the solar system, which are all affected by the sun.
Solar Cycle 26 is expected to begin some time between January 2029 and December 2032, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, but the agency has not yet produced a prediction for the next cycle.
In order to better track space weather, NASA announced that it will launch the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory missions, as well as the NOAA's SWFO-L1 mission, from Falcon 9 as early as next week. It comes just a few months after SpaceX helped NASA launch TRACERS twin satellites which are studying how the electrically-charged solar wind interacts with Earth's magnetic field.
"Space weather predictions are critical for supporting the spacecraft and astronauts of NASA's Artemis campaign, as understanding the space environment is a vital part of mitigating astronaut exposure to space radiation," NASA said Monday.
In May 2024, NASA officials recorded the strongest geomagnetic storm in more than 20 years. Several X-class solar flares — the largest of B-class, followed by C and M — sent the northern lights to far lower latitudes than normal, as far south as Mexico.
Geomagnetic storms have the ability to impact how and whether technology functions on a massive scale, electrical engineer David Wallace explained in The Conversation last year.
"Internet service providers could go down, which in turn would take out the ability of different systems to communicate with each other. High-frequency communication systems such as ground-to-air, shortwave and ship-to-shore radio would be disrupted," Wallace wrote.
Kiki Intarasuwan contributed to this report.
Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She typically covers breaking news, extreme weather and issues involving social justice. Emily Mae previously wrote for outlets like the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.
