{"id":196695,"date":"2024-09-27T01:23:02","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T06:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/nasas-biosentinel-studies-solar-radiation-as-earth-watches-aurora"},"modified":"2024-09-27T01:23:02","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T06:23:02","slug":"nasas-biosentinel-studies-solar-radiation-as-earth-watches-aurora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/nasas-biosentinel-studies-solar-radiation-as-earth-watches-aurora","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s BioSentinel Studies Solar Radiation as Earth Watches Aurora"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nasas-biosentinel-studies-solar-radiation-as-earth-watches-aurora2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In May 2024, a geomagnetic storm hit Earth, sending auroras across the planet\u2019s skies in a once-in-a-generation light display. These dazzling sights are possible because of the interaction of coronal mass ejections \u2013 explosions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun \u2013 with Earth\u2019s magnetic field, which protects us from the radiation the Sun spits out during turbulent storms.<\/p>\n<p>But what might happen to humans beyond the safety of Earth\u2019s protection? This question is essential as NASA plans to send humans to the Moon and on to Mars. During the May storm, the small spacecraft BioSentinel was collecting data to learn more about the impacts of radiation in deep space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe wanted to take advantage of the unique stage of the solar cycle we\u2019re in \u2013 the solar maximum, when the Sun is at its most active \u2013 so that we can continue to monitor the space radiation environment,\u201d said Sergio Santa Maria, principal investigator for BioSentinel\u2019s spaceflight mission at NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center in California\u2019s Silicon Valley. \u201cThese data are relevant not just to the heliophysics community but also to understand the radiation environment for future crewed missions into deep space.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In May 2024, a geomagnetic storm hit Earth, sending auroras across the planet\u2019s skies in a once-in-a-generation light display. These dazzling sights are possible because of the interaction of coronal mass ejections \u2013 explosions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun \u2013 with Earth\u2019s magnetic field, which protects us from the radiation the Sun [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}