18.11.2025

When Blue Origin scrubbed the launch of its NG-2 mission on its New Glenn rocket on Nov. 12, the culprit wasn’t Florida’s notoriously unpredictable thunderstorms or high winds — it was space weather. NASA’s ESCAPADE mission, the primary payload on NG-2, was eventually launched on Nov. 13 and is designed to study how solar storms stripped Mars of its atmosphere. However, the mission was grounded by the very phenomenon it was built to investigate.

The decision to scrub the second NG-2 launch attempt came after multiple coronal mass ejections barreled toward Earth earlier in the week, triggering severe G4 geomagnetic storms that painted auroras across skies as far south as Mexico and Florida. For mission planners, the spectacular light show represented a serious threat to the two ESCAPADE spacecraft during the vulnerable launch and deployment phases of the mission.

“Due to highly elevated solar activity and its potential effects on the ESCAPADE spacecraft, NASA is postponing launch until space weather conditions improve,” Blue Origin announced in a statement on Nov. 12.

The Sun follows a roughly 11-year activity cycle, alternating between periods of relative calm and intense upheaval. During solar maximum, geomagnetic storms become more frequent and intense. Earth is currently experiencing a decline from a “solar maximum,” which most likely peaked in October 2024. The Sunspot region AR4274, which caused the delay of Blue Origin’s ESCAPADE mission, has become one of the most prolific producers of solar flares in Solar Cycle 25. On November 11, it unleashed an X5.1-class flare — the strongest of 2025 — triggering R3-level radio blackouts across Africa and Europe.

Solar weather events come in several flavors, each with distinct characteristics and impacts. Solar flares release electromagnetic energy that can reach Earth in about eight minutes, disrupting radio communications almost immediately. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — massive expulsions of plasma and charged particles from the surface of the Sun — travel more slowly but pack a bigger punch. These gigantic clouds of solar material can reach speeds approaching 3,000 km per second, with the fastest Earth-directed CMEs arriving in as little as 15 to 18 hours.

When CMEs slam into Earth’s magnetosphere, they trigger geomagnetic storms classified from G1 (minor) to G5 (extreme). The recent G4 event was only the fourth of its kind during the current solar cycle, underscoring its rarity and severity.

For decades, launch weather officers have monitored terrestrial conditions — watching for lightning, tracking wind shear, and measuring cloud thickness ahead of launches. Those concerns have not disappeared; a rocket carrying tons of propellant and oxidizer, creating extensive trails of electrically conductive plasma, is essentially a giant lightning rod full of highly explosive commodities.

But space weather adds another layer of complexity. During severe solar storms, spacecraft electronics are bombarded by high-energy particles even before reaching orbit. The launch and deployment phase represents peak vulnerability, before protective systems fully activate and before spacecraft can orient their shielded sides toward the radiation source.

Communication represents another critical concern. Solar flares cause the ionosphere to absorb radio signals rather than reflect them, disrupting communications systems on the sunlit side of Earth. For mission operators, losing telemetry and command links during a launch and the crucial first hours after launch is unacceptable. Ground station communications could be degraded or lost entirely, leaving mission operators, the rocket, and its payload flying blind during critical maneuvers.

While space weather can affect launch operations and delay launches on Earth, its effects can also severely impact operational satellites and spacecraft in orbit. In fact, space weather effects in orbit are more persistent, and their mechanisms of damage are insidious and cumulative.

During extreme space weather events, trapped electron fluxes can increase by several orders of magnitude. These high-energy particles can penetrate spacecraft and deposit charge in the dielectric materials of electronic circuit boards. When sufficient charge accumulates, catastrophic discharge can damage or destroy critical components, potentially crippling spacecraft, satellites, and other payloads.

Solar panels also steadily degrade under radiation bombardment. During radiation storms, charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field collide with solar cells, reducing their power-generating capacity.

An infamous February 2022 incident with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation illustrates these risks. On Feb. 3, 2022, SpaceX launched a batch of 49 Starlink v1.5 satellites during what appeared to be minor geomagnetic conditions. However, even that modest storm led to atmospheric expansion and increased drag in low-Earth orbit. Unable to raise their orbits quickly enough, dozens of satellites reentered Earth’s atmosphere — a multimillion-dollar loss demonstrating how even minor geomagnetic storms can prove catastrophic for spacecraft in vulnerable orbits.

Geographic location also matters enormously. Earth’s magnetic field acts like a giant bottle, trapping high-energy electrons and forcing them to spiral along magnetic field lines in doughnut-shaped zones called the Van Allen radiation belts. Unlike solar particles that pass by Earth, these trapped electrons remain confined indefinitely, creating permanent radiation zones that continuously bombard any satellite orbiting through them.

Satellites in geostationary orbit, positioned 36,000 km above the equator, orbit at the outer edge of the Van Allen radiation belts where the trapped electron environment is particularly intense. During geomagnetic storms, the concentration of these trapped electrons can increase by several orders of magnitude, dramatically raising the risk of satellite failure.

Medium-Earth orbit satellites — including GPS and other navigation constellations between 18,000 and 25,000 km — occupy another vulnerable zone where radiation effects are severe but often underestimated. Satellites at these higher altitudes face relentless exposure to Earth’s natural particle accelerator.

Space telescopes face unique challenges during periods of harsh space weather. The Hubble Space Telescope, orbiting just 560 km above Earth, benefits from our planet’s magnetic field and has received multiple servicing missions. Its modular design anticipated this need — astronauts have upgraded instruments and replaced components degraded by years in orbit, with particle bombardment from solar flares and CMEs surely shouldering some of the blame for Hubble’s deterioration.

The James Webb Space Telescope enjoys no such luxury. Webb is positioned at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point — a staggering 1.5 million km from Earth. Webb operates beyond the magnetosphere’s protection with no possibility of servicing. Engineers designed the observatory with a five-layer sunshield that provides protection equivalent to a Sun protection factor (SPF) of 1,000,000. But Webb’s isolation means any failures are permanent.

Fortunately, for astronauts aboard the ISS, space weather presents a less significant challenge. At altitudes of 400 km, the ISS’s orbit provides substantial protection from Earth’s magnetosphere and radiation belts. However, during severe storms, crews can shelter in the Russian-built Zvezda Service Module and other areas where the station’s greatest mass concentration offers maximum shielding.

Counterintuitively, astronauts may actually be safer during solar storms than during periods of quiet activity. The “Forbush decrease,” named after physicist Scott Forbush, occurs when magnetically charged particles from CMEs sweep away cosmic radiation. Because cosmic rays penetrate the Station’s hull more easily than solar protons, this temporary reduction in galactic cosmic radiation could lower overall exposure. The Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, which have traveled beyond Neptune, have measured this effect, as have astronauts on the ISS and Mir space stations.

But this protection doesn’t extend to deep space. For future lunar missions or Mars expeditions, solar storms pose a potential lethal threat. Without Earth’s magnetic field, astronauts would be exposed to the full brunt of solar energetic particles and radiation. Significant events could deliver fatal radiation doses within hours. Mission planners for Artemis and eventual Mars missions are tasked with developing robust forecasting systems and scheduling spacewalks around predicted solar-quiet periods. Furthermore, habitats with radiation-sheltered areas massive enough to protect crews for days at a time will likely be required.

Today’s space weather forecasting relies on a network of solar observatories, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), SOHO, and GOES satellites. These provide a 15 to 60-minute warning when the DSCOVR satellite at the L1 Lagrange point detects an incoming CME shock wave. For some operations, an hour’s notice suffices. For launches like ESCAPADE, forecasters must forecast conditions days in advance, a much more complex problem.

The ESCAPADE delay demonstrates both the sophistication and limitations of current forecasting. Scientists correctly predicted severe conditions days ahead, enabling the scrub decision. However, they couldn’t specify exactly when conditions would improve, leaving Blue Origin and NASA in limbo. 

The growing commercial space industry — with SpaceX conducting a record-breaking launch cadence — makes space weather an operational reality rather than an occasional nuisance. Satellite constellations like Starlink, OneWeb, and Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper) collectively comprise thousands of spacecraft, each vulnerable to solar storms.

Engineers are responding with improved radiation-hardened components, better shielding designs, and mission architectures that account for space weather from the start. Operational procedures are evolving to include powering down vulnerable systems or reorienting spacecraft to present shielded surfaces toward incoming particles during severe space weather events.

A 2019 European Space Agency study estimated that a single extreme space weather event could cause €15 billion in economic damage across Europe. As our civilization becomes increasingly dependent on space-based infrastructure, from GPS navigation to satellite communications and weather forecasting, the stakes continue to rise. Research suggests the probability of a Carrington Event-class superstorm hovers between 0.46 and 1.88% over the next decade.

With the successful launch of ESCAPADE on Nov. 13, it begins its mission to study how solar storms stripped Mars of its atmosphere billions of years ago, but it also carries particular irony. The mission delayed by space weather will help us understand how a planet lost its protection against that very phenomenon — and perhaps inform how we can better protect our own technological civilization as we push deeper into the solar system.

Quelle: NSF