Satellites, scientists track storm from Sun to surface

Abstract

On January 6, the Sun spat a coronal mass ejection (CME) into the solar wind and toward Earth; by January 10, a cloud of charged particles buffeted the face of the planet. It was, by several accounts, a run‐of‐the‐mill space weather event. But the scientific work surrounding the storm was anything but run‐of‐the‐mill.For the first time, space physicists observed and recorded a space weather event from start to finish, from solar surface to earthly impact. Researchers are calling it the first true success story of the four‐year‐old International Solar Terrestrial Physics program (ISTP), which includes NASA's WIND and POLAR spacecraft; the joint Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission of NASA and the European Space Agency; the joint Geotail mission of NASA and Japan's Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science; and Russia's Interball satellites.