What is space weather?

  • Released Tuesday, September 30, 2025
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Though it is almost 100 million miles away from Earth, the Sun influences our daily lives in ways you may not realize.

A farmer stops their planting operations due to poor GPS signal for their autonomous tractor. A power grid manager changes the configuration of their network to ensure a blackout doesn’t occur due to voltage instability. A pilot switches to back-up communication equipment due to loss of high-frequency radio. A commercial internet company providing service to the military must change the orbit of their spacecraft to avoid a collision due to increased atmospheric drag.

These are a few examples of the ways the Sun influences our everyday lives. This is what we define as space weather – the conditions of the space environment driven by the Sun and its impacts on objects in the solar system.

This video was featured in the IMAP, Carruthers, SWFO-L1 live broadcast on September 24, 2025.

Music Credit: “Andromeda” by David Naroth, Arun Ganapathy & Victor Mercader [BMI] from Universal Production Music

For More Information

See https://science.nasa.gov/heliophysics/focus-areas/space-weather/

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Tuesday, September 30, 2025.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, September 30, 2025 at 2:45 PM EDT.