Sources: NBC
ISRO successfully launches the PSLV-XL rocket carrying the European Space Agency's PROBA-3 satellites from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, India, in a solar observatory mission to gather data about the Sun's atmosphere. 2024-12-5
The sun emits the largest solar flare since 2005, days after producing auroras in the Northern and Southern Hempisheres. 2024-05-14
Scientists announce that NASA's "Parker Solar Probe" became the first ever spacecraft to enter the stellar corona of the Sun during a flyby in April. 2021-12-14
According to a study from researchers at the University of California, Riverside, Venus would be able to support life if Jupiter hadn't altered its orbit around the Sun nearly 4 billion years ago. 2020-10-1
The United Launch Alliance successfully launches the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter (SolO) satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The probe will study the Sun, and in particular its inner heliosphere. 2020-02-9
NASA's "Parker Solar Probe" spacecraft becomes the closest ever sent to the sun, by passing 42.7 million km (26.6 million miles) from the sun's surface. The previous record was set in 1976 by the "Helios 2" spacecraft. Parker's elliptical orbit will eventually take it to within 6.1 million km (3.8 million miles) of the sun. 2018-10-30
Scientists (in the article published in the journal "Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics") warn that the ozone layer that protects people from the sun's ultraviolet radiation is recovering only over less populated areas. 2018-02-6
Scientists at Northumbria University in northeast England develop a computerized statistical model of the Sun's solar cycle (a measurement of the number of sunspots and solar flares, in this case between 1976 and 2008, and their intensity and activity). While preliminary, and not yet peer-reviewed, the data predicts irregularities in the cycle: the Northern Hemisphere could experience a slight lowering in temperatures in the 2030s. 2015-07-14
New data from the NASA space probe MESSENGER indicate that Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, almost surely has water ice buried beneath the surface at its north pole. 2012-11-29
An unusually large coronal mass ejection emitted by the Sun barely missed the Earth by nine days, dubbed the Solar storm of 2012. If it hit, it would have caused up to US$2.6 trillion in damages to electrical equipment worldwide. 2012-07-23