NASA has been monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.

This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for years, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers.

The space agency’s satellites and spacecraft are particularly vulnerable to the weakened magnetic field strength within the anomaly, and the resulting exposure to charged particles from the Sun.

When two probes orbiting the sun aligned with one another, researchers harnessed the opportunity to track the sun’s magnetic field as it traveled into the solar system. They found that the sharply oscillating magnetic field smooths out to gentle waves while accelerating the surrounding solar wind, according to a University of Michigan-led study published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The sharp S-shaped bends of the magnetic fields streaming out of the sun, called magnetic switchbacks, have long been of interest to solar scientists. Switchbacks impact the solar wind —the charged particles, or plasma, that stream from the sun and influence space weather in ways that can disrupt Earth’s electrical grids, radio waves, radar and satellites.

The new understanding of magnetic switchback changes over time will help improve solar wind forecasts to better predict space weather and its potential impacts on Earth.