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China Built The Most Advanced Space Station In Just 2 Years | Tiangong
Apr 30, 2026
China was rejected from the International Space Station in 2011 when the US Congress passed a law banning NASA from any cooperation with China‘s space program. Most nations would have accepted that and moved on. China did something completely different. They decided to build their own space station from scratch, alone, without any international help, and they finished it in just 2 years. The result is Tiangong, the Heavenly Palace, a 3-module space station orbiting 400 kilometers above Earth that is packed with technology so advanced it makes the ISS look like it belongs in a museum. From the world‘s first space microwave to smart circadian lighting, resistance band uniforms, and a robotic telescope 300 times wider than Hubble, what China quietly built up there is one of the most remarkable engineering achievements in human history.
NASA’s IMAP Begins Primary Science Mission
(February 2, 2026)
NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) began its two-year primary science mission on Feb. 1 to explore and map the boundaries of our heliosphere — the protective bubble created by the solar wind that encapsulates our solar system.
The mission, which launched on Sept. 24, 2025, relies on 10 scientific instruments to chart a comprehensive picture of what’s roiling in space, from high-energy particles originating at the Sun, to magnetic fields in interplanetary space, to dust left from exploded stars in interstellar space.
NASA begins mission to map the boundaries of our heliosphere
(February 3, 2026)
A NASA probe has started its mission to map the heliosphere, which is a huge protective bubble around the solar system that was created by the sun, the space agency announced on Monday.
The space agency‘s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, is expected to continue its mission for two years, using scientific instruments to chart the boundaries of the heliosphere and what‘s going on inside of it.
The probe is focusing on high-energy particles bursting from the surface of the sun, the magnetic fields that form in the spaces between planets, and the dust left behind by collapsed stars farther out in the galaxy.
The Shrinking of the Heliosphere Due to Reduced Solar Wind
(December 2009)
Abstract. The heliosphere is the space within which the solar wind dominates and the solar interplanetary magnetic field prevails. Its boundary is determined by the balance between stellar and solar winds. Owing to the present reduction in the solar wind pressure, one would expect that the stellar wind would push the heliosphere inward leading to its shrinkage. In this paper we calculate the extent of the heliosphere at different solar wind status. Backward estimation of the extent of the heliosphere since 1890 is done. It is found that the heliosphere oscillated between 75 and 125 AU between 1890 – 2010. Most important is the forecast of the shrinkage and oscillations of the heliosphere and their implications on the earth. The shrinkage of the heliosphere would allow more invasions of cosmic rays to the earth and planets, increased cloud cover and a cooler Earth.
(…)
1.4 Prediction of the State of solar Activity During The Next Few Decades
Weak solar cycles occur at the bottom of Wolf-Gleissberg cycles. They tend to occur in series of 3-4 cycles. A single weak cycle also occurs in between the two maximums of Wolf-Gleissberg cycle. Since the last weak solar cycles occurred around 1900 while the previous ones occurred around 1800 then the newly started cycle 24 should be a weak solar cycle. However, owing to the 200-years de Verie cycle of the sun, it is more likely that the status of the coming solar activity would be something like those weak cycles around 1800 as shown in Fig 1. Svalgaard (2005) also predicted that cycle 24 would be the lowest so far in the past 100 years with the maximum sunspot number around 75.
Surprise: Solar System „Force Field“ Shrinks Fast
(October 1, 2010)
For starters, it‘s been assumed that the heliosphere‘s expansion and contraction follows the sun‘s roughly 11-year activity cycle, during which the flow rate of charged particles, or solar wind, fluctuates.
But when scientists compared IBEX maps of the heliosphere taken just six months apart, the researchers found that it had shrunk to a much greater extent than expected.
Sun‘s protective ‚bubble‘ is shrinking
(October 18, 2008)
The scientists hope the IBEX mission will allow them to gain a better understanding of what happens at this boundary and help them predict what protection it will offer in the future.
Without the heliosphere the harmful intergalactic cosmic radiation would make life on Earth almost impossible by destroying DNA and making the climate uninhabitable.
Measurements made by the Ulysses deep space probe, which was launched in 1990 to orbit the sun, have shown that the pressure created inside the heliosphere by the solar wind has been decreasing.
The Ulysses Legacy: Observing the Sun for 17 years
Sep 3, 2008
The ESA/NASA Ulysses mission has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the Sun and our local interstellar neighbourhood. Ulysses was designed to last for five years but the mission was extended four times, allowing Ulysses to pass over the Sun‘s poles for a second and third time, and spending more than 18 years in space.
Energy coupling between the solar wind and the magnetosphere
(June 1981)
This paper describes in detail how we are led to the first approximation expression for the solar wind-magnetosphere energy coupling function ɛ, which correlates well with the total energy consumption rate U T of the magnetosphere. It is shown that ɛ is the primary factor which controls the time development of magnetospheric substorms and storms. The finding of this particular expression ɛ indicates how the solar wind couples its energy to the magnetosphere; the solar wind and the magnetosphere constitute a dynamo. In fact, the power P generated by the dynamo can be identified as ɛ by using a dimensional analysis. Furthermore, the finding of ɛ indicates that the magnetosphere is closer to a directly driven system than to an unloading system which stores the generated energy before converting it to substorm and storm energies.
Physics Professor Gerard Fasel and Seaver Students Present Solar-Terrestrial Interactions at the American Geophysical Union Conference
(January 13, 2026)
Coining the term “near-Earth astrophysics,” Fasel has devoted much of his career to investigating solar-terrestrial interactions between the Sun and Earth, using the aurora borealis to obtain clues regarding the coupling mechanisms between the solar wind and the Earth’s terrestrial magnetic field.
“Stars have winds,” says Fasel. “And this includes our Sun. While solar wind is a relatively continuous stream of particles that interact with the Earth’s magnetic field, the Sun can also produce powerful solar storms. These storms expel billions of charged particles [plasma] coupled to magnetic fields, called coronal mass ejections, which bang up into the Earth’s magnetic field.”
The Earth’s magnetic field lines, Fasel explains, “act like wires” on which these particles travel down into the Earth’s upper atmosphere, specifically the ionosphere. The aurora is an end result of this interaction, where high-energy electrons collide with oxygen to produce green light, while those of lower energy produce a raspberry-red color.
Swarm probes weakening of Earth’s magnetic field
(May 20, 2020)
Over the last 200 years, the magnetic field has lost around 9% of its strength on a global average. A large region of reduced magnetic intensity has developed between Africa and South America and is known as the South Atlantic Anomaly.
Mapping the Cosmic Web
This visualization of a computer simulation showcases the ‘cosmic web’, the large scale structure of the universe. Each bright knot is an entire galaxy, while the purple filaments show where material exists between the galaxies. To the human eye, only the galaxies would be visible, and this visualization allows us to see the strands of material connecting the galaxies and forming the cosmic web. This visualization is based on a scientific simulation of the growth of structure in the universe. The matter, dark matter, and dark energy in a region of the universe are followed from very early times of the universe through to the present day using the equations of gravity, hydrodynamics, and cosmology. The normal matter has been clipped to show only the densest regions, which are the galaxies, and is shown in white. The dark matter is shown in purple. The size of the simulation is a cube with a side length of 134 megaparsecs (437 million light-years). The camera choreography is a straight line path through the simulation. The camera accelerates from a standstill at the start, flies at a constant speed, and then decelerates to a stop at the end. The “cruising speed” of the camera is 250,000 parsecs per frame, or about 20 million light-years per second (at 24 frames per second). That’s more than 600 trillion times the speed of light. Buckle your seatbelts.
More than a planetary fender-bender: New study finds Earth collided with dense interstellar cloud, possibly affecting life on planet
(June 10, 2024)
Evidence of a long-ago collision involving the Earth was there in the form of specific radioactive isotopes deposited across the Earth and Moon. There were, however, skeptics.
But now researchers have tracked the sun’s path through the Milky Way back to a crash 2 to 3 million years ago with a dense interstellar cloud. The event was so violent it appears to have collapsed the sun’s protective bubble around the solar system and possibly even affected life on Earth.
(…)
“We don’t often discuss the impact of astrophysics on Earth because the astronomical timescales are very long, and the human species emerged on Earth just a few million years ago,” Loeb said. “But a few million years ago there was the potential for us to be passing through a very dense cloud. We didn’t work out the biological implications, but it’s clear that if you shrink the heliosphere to within the orbit of the Earth around the sun, we are not protected anymore. It could have significant implications for life on Earth.”
Detailed understanding of reduced geoeffectiveness of solar cycle 24 in association with geomagnetic storms
(May 2025)
Solar Cycle 24, the weakest in over a century, exhibited significant deviations from previous cycles, beginning with a prolonged minimum, weak polar fields, and asynchronous polar field reversal, leading to hemispheric asymmetry. Sunspot activity declined by approximately 30% compared to Cycle 23, while the overall occurrence rate of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) decreased, although some studies suggest that the rate of halo CMEs relative to total CMEs may have remained relatively stable. This study investigates the impact of weaker solar activity on geomagnetic storm dynamics by analyzing CME properties, solar wind conditions, and their influence on magnetospheric energy transfer. Key findings indicate that a lower heliospheric pressure in Cycle 24 caused CMEs to expand more than in Cycle 23, altering energy transfer to Earth‘s magnetosphere.
The Weakest Solar Cycle in 100 Years
(July 24, 2013)
The Sun is acting weird. It typically puts on a pageant of magnetic activity every 11 years for aurora watchers and sungazers alike, but this time it overslept. When it finally woke up (a year late), it gave the weakest performance in 100 years.
What’s even weirder is that scientists, who aren’t usually shy about tossing hypotheses about, are at a loss for a good explanation.
The Shrinking of the Heliosphere Due to Reduced Solar Wind
(December 2009)
Abstract. The heliosphere is the space within which the solar wind dominates and the solar interplanetary magnetic field prevails. Its boundary is determined by the balance between stellar and solar winds. Owing to the present reduction in the solar wind pressure, one would expect that the stellar wind would push the heliosphere inward leading to its shrinkage. In this paper we calculate the extent of the heliosphere at different solar wind status. Backward estimation of the extent of the heliosphere since 1890 is done. It is found that the heliosphere oscillated between 75 and 125 AU between 1890 – 2010. Most important is the forecast of the shrinkage and oscillations of the heliosphere and their implications on the earth. The shrinkage of the heliosphere would allow more invasions of cosmic rays to the earth and planets, increased cloud cover and a cooler Earth.
(…)
1.4 Prediction of the State of solar Activity During The Next Few Decades
Weak solar cycles occur at the bottom of Wolf-Gleissberg cycles. They tend to occur in series of 3-4 cycles. A single weak cycle also occurs in between the two maximums of Wolf-Gleissberg cycle. Since the last weak solar cycles occurred around 1900 while the previous ones occurred around 1800 then the newly started cycle 24 should be a weak solar cycle. However, owing to the 200-years de Verie cycle of the sun, it is more likely that the status of the coming solar activity would be something like those weak cycles around 1800 as shown in Fig 1. Svalgaard (2005) also predicted that cycle 24 would be the lowest so far in the past 100 years with the maximum sunspot number around 75.
11 Years Charting Edge of Solar System
Jun 11, 2020
Far, far beyond the orbits of the planets lie the hazy outlines of the magnetic bubble in space that we call home.
This is the heliosphere, the vast bubble that is generated by the Sun’s magnetic field and envelops all the planets. The borders of this cosmic bubble are not fixed. In response to the Sun’s gasps and sighs, they shrink and stretch over the years.
Now, for the first time, scientists have used an entire solar cycle of data from NASA’s IBEX spacecraft to study how the heliosphere changes over time. Solar cycles last roughly 11 years, as the Sun swings from seasons of high to low activity, and back to high again. With IBEX’s long record, scientists were eager to examine how the Sun’s mood swings play out at the edge of the heliosphere. The results show the shifting outer heliosphere in great detail, deftly sketch the heliosphere’s shape — a matter of debate in recent years, and hint at processes behind one of its most puzzling features. These findings, along with a newly fine-tuned data set, are published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplements on June 10, 2020.
A Weak Spot in Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Going from Bad to Worse
(November 10, 2025)
The observations by the European Space Agency’s Swarm trio of satellites found that Earth’s already weak magnetic field over the South Atlantic Ocean—a region known as the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA)—is getting worse and that it has grown by an area half the size of continental Europe since 2014. At the same time, a region over Canada where the field is particularly strong has shrunk, while another strong field region in Siberia has grown, the measurements show.
PUNCH – Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere
Key Questions
The PUNCH mission will use four suitcase-sized satellites to observe the Sun and its environment. Working together, the four PUNCH satellites will create a combined field of view and map the region where the Sun’s corona (or outer atmosphere) transitions to the solar wind (the constant outflow of material from the Sun).
The PUNCH mission will answer questions about:
How the Sun’s atmosphere transitions to the solar wind.
How structures in the solar wind are created.
How these processes affect the solar system.
NASA will soon launch PUNCH to study how the Sun influences the space around us
On March 2, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission into low Earth orbit. From this location, its four satellites will have nearly constant views of the Sun to help researchers answer questions about how activity near our star propagates through the inner solar system, influencing the space weather we experience here on Earth.
SPHEREx
About the mission
Launch date: Late February 2025
The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) is a planned two-year mission that will survey the sky in optical as well as near-infrared light which, though not visible to the human eye, serves as a powerful tool for answering cosmic questions. Astronomers will use the mission to gather data on more than 450 million galaxies, as well as, more than 100 million stars in our own Milky Way.
NASA to Preview Sky-Mapping Space Telescope Ahead of Launch
NASA will host a news conference at 12 p.m. EST Friday, Jan. 31, to discuss a new telescope that will improve our understanding of how the universe evolved and search for key ingredients for life in our galaxy.
Agency experts will preview NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) mission, which will help scientists better understand the structure of the universe, how galaxies form and evolve, and the origins and abundance of water. Launch is targeted for no earlier than Thursday, Feb. 27.
Psyche mission launches as NASA’s first trip to a metal world
(October 13, 2023)
To accomplish the rest of the mission, the van-size spacecraft will rely on its new solar electric propulsion system, powered by Hall-effect thrusters, Oh said. The thrusters will utilize the spacecraft’s large solar arrays and “use electricity to ionize xenon gas and accelerate those charged ions through an electric field to very, very high speeds,” Oh said. (…)
Also along for the ride is the Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration, or DSOC. Occurring during the first two years of the journey to Psyche, it will be NASA’s most distant experiment of high-bandwidth laser communications, testing the sending and receiving of data to and from Earth using an invisible near-infrared laser.
Giant gravitational waves: why scientists are so excited
On 29 June, four separate teams of scientists made an announcement1–4 that promises to shake up astrophysics: they had seen strong hints of very long gravitational waves warping the Galaxy.
Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time that are generated when large masses accelerate. They were first detected in 2015, but the latest evidence hints at ‘monster’ ripples with wavelengths of 0.3 parsecs (1 light year) or more; the waves detected until now have wavelengths of tens to hundreds of kilometres.
Here Nature reports what these monster gravitational waves could mean for our understanding of the cosmos, and how the field could evolve.
The Cosmos Is Thrumming With Gravitational Waves, Astronomers Find
(June 28, 2023)
The scientists strongly suspect that these gravitational waves are the collective echo of pairs of supermassive black holes — thousands of them, some as massive as a billion suns, sitting at the hearts of ancient galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away — as they slowly merge and generate ripples in space-time.
“I like to think of it as a choir, or an orchestra,” said Xavier Siemens, a physicist at Oregon State University who is part of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, or NANOGrav, collaboration, which led the effort. Each pair of supermassive black holes is generating a different note, Dr. Siemens said, “and what we’re receiving is the sum of all those signals at once.”
Searching for the Nano-Hertz Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background with the Chinese Pulsar Timing Array Data Release I
(Published 29 June 2023)
Observing and timing a group of millisecond pulsars with high rotational stability enables the direct detection of gravitational waves (GWs). The GW signals can be identified from the spatial correlations encoded in the times-of-arrival of widely spaced pulsar-pairs. The Chinese Pulsar Timing Array (CPTA) is a collaboration aiming at the direct GW detection with observations carried out using Chinese radio telescopes. This short article serves as a „table of contents“ for a forthcoming series of papers related to the CPTA Data Release 1 (CPTA DR1) which uses observations from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope. (…)
A Pulsar Timing Array (PTA; Foster & Backer 1990) is an array of pulsars, which are regularly observed. The times-of-arrival (TOAs) are measured for pulses that we see beams of electromagnetic waves emitted by the pulsars sweeping over the Earth. As the directions of the radiation beam and the pulsar rotational axis do not coincide, we observe this radiation as regular pulses synchronized to the pulsar rotation (Gold 1969).
Sun‘s protective ‚bubble‘ is shrinking
(18.10.2008)
New data has revealed that the heliosphere, the protective shield of energy that surrounds our solar system, has weakened by 25 per cent over the past decade and is now at it lowest level since the space race began 50 years ago. (…)
„Around 90 per cent of the galactic cosmic radiation is deflected by our heliosphere, so the boundary protects us from this harsh galactic environment.“
The heliosphere is created by the solar wind, a combination of electrically charged particles and magnetic fields that emanate a more than a million miles an hour from the sun, meet the intergalactic gas that fills the gaps in space between solar systems.