Every Cosmic Herald story on NOAA — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
A House subcommittee grilled the Office of Space Commerce on its plan for a single opt-in "Space Commerce Certification" to fast-track approval of orbital manufacturing, satellite servicing, and lunar ventures that fall outside FAA and FCC authority.
Read the story →Weeks after an X-class flare sparked aurora across 30 US states, NOAA's July 15 snapshot shows 36 tame sunspots, a mild C3 flare, and just quiet-to-minor storm odds — a reminder that solar weather swings fast.
Departing sunspot AR4485 unleashed an M1.2 flare and a radio blackout before rotating off the disk, while a trailing coronal mass ejection could nudge Earth's geomagnetic field to G1 storm levels late this week.
Sunspot AR4482 fired off an M4.0 flare and a major filament eruption on July 7, and with a coronal-hole wind stream and CME now converging on Earth, forecasters give mid-to-high latitudes a real shot at aurora through the weekend.
Active region AR4482, a magnetically tangled beta-gamma-delta sunspot, has been lobbing M-class flares at Earth since July 8, and NOAA gives it decent odds of another one through July 11 — with a side of aurora from an incoming solar wind stream.
A CME-driven G3 storm outperformed its own forecast to paint aurora across 30-plus US states on July 4, then a fresh X1.3 flare from newly numbered AR4482 kept the sun's holiday fireworks going.
Lawmakers grilled NASA's and NOAA's top space weather officials on grid, GPS, and communications risks the same week an X1.1 flare and G3 storms lit up July 4th skies with aurora.
A CME from a June 30 X1.1 flare overperformed its forecast, hitting G3 (Strong) and dragging the aurora as far south as Utah, Colorado and Nevada on Independence Day.
Active Region 4479 threw an X1.1 flare and roughly ten M-class flares in a single day, launching a staggered train of Earth-directed CMEs. NOAA issued G1-G2 storm watches for July 3-4, opening a holiday-weekend aurora window that could reach the northern-tier United States.
NOAA flagged G1-G2 storm conditions for June 30 into July 1 as a June 26 CME arrived and a slower June 27 CME chased behind, while AR4479 fired an X1.1 flare at 20:50 UTC - putting aurora within reach of northern-tier U.S. skies.
A coronal mass ejection that left the Sun on June 26 is forecast to reach Earth around June 30, and NOAA has issued a geomagnetic storm watch — with aurora possibly visible as far south as Seattle and Minneapolis.
A G1 geomagnetic storm crossed the threshold at 4:43 UTC on June 25, 2026, driven by coronal-hole solar wind and a possible glancing CME, as new sunspot region AR4478 fired most of the day's 16 C-class flares.
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