Forecasting the final frontier: How research prepares U.S. for the next solar storm
Just last month, a powerful solar storm lit up skies across the northern hemisphere, producing vivid auroras visible as far south as parts of the northern United States.
But the breathtaking light show wasn’t the only impact. The severe geomagnetic storm, triggered by a coronal mass ejection from the sun, sent waves of charged particles racing toward Earth, disrupting satellites, scrambling GPS signals and straining sections of the power grid. The event was a stark reminder that space weather is not just about spectacle, but a growing national security risk.
At the University of Florida, space physicist Alicia Petersen, Ph.D., is working on solutions that could help shield the nation from the next big solar storm.
“As our society becomes increasingly dependent on space-based technologies — from agriculture and aviation to defense and disaster response — understanding space weather isn’t optional. It’s essential,” said Petersen, an associate professor in UF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and a core member of the UF Astraeus Space Institute. Petersen’s group is called the Space Weather Impacts, Forecasting and Transit, or SWIFT, Lab.
Her lab leads efforts to forecast and model solar energetic particles and their impact on spacecraft and space-based infrastructure, such as communication systems. The work is small piece of a growing federal push, involving NASA, NOAA, and the U.S. Space Force, to respond to changes in the space environment and build more accurate prediction systems. The importance of this push is underscored by the surging intensity of the current solar cycle.
“We’re just past the peak of the current solar cycle,” Petersen said. “Intense solar activity is still ongoing and further displays of extreme space weather may still be on the horizon this cycle.”
Petersen’s team is the only dedicated space weather research group at UF. Their work focuses on modeling the inner heliosphere — the vast space between the Earth and the sun — to understand how solar energetic particles propagate through it and interact with spacecraft. They’re also hoping to build a plasma chamber to simulate local impacts of space weather on space-based hardware and collaborating with engineers of autonomous control systems to develop the future capability for spacecraft to autonomously respond to space weather threats in real-time.
“We model how these particles move and how spacecraft systems can respond in orbit,” Petersen said. “By doing that, we can better prepare for disruptions, or even design operations and systems that are more resilient to these events.”
Solar flares and coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, often described as “storms on the sun,” can unleash energy equivalent to billions of nuclear bombs. Flares travel at the speed of light while CMEs travel hundreds of miles per second. While they can produce stunning auroras, they also pose a serious risk to defense systems, civilian infrastructure and the global economy.
“We’ve already seen a taste of what solar storms can do,” Petersen said. “The 2003 ‘Halloween Storms’ impacted over half of all satellites in orbit at the time. And we know the sun is capable of even more extreme events.”
The U.S. Department of Defense has become increasingly focused on space weather as a critical national security concern. Solar storms can disrupt satellite communications, GPS navigation, radar systems, and power infrastructure, all of which are central to military operations and national defense. Just weeks ago, on June 15, all of North America was engulfed in a short-wave radio blackout that was caused by space weather. While commercial radio operations were in the clear at a higher frequency, this solar flare did cause signal loss affecting amateur radio operators across the nation.
As the military’s reliance on space-based assets continues to grow, so does the need for accurate forecasting of solar activity. The DOD collaborates with agencies like NASA, NOAA, and the National Science Foundation to support research that improves space weather prediction, including work at universities such as UF. Space weather forecasting is now seen not only as a scientific challenge but as a strategic imperative to safeguard defense systems and infrastructure against high-impact solar events.
Petersen’s work feeds directly into national efforts led by agencies like NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, which has a public dashboard to track space weather in real time.
“We’re not just looking at academic questions. We’re helping to build the systems that protect power grids, enable safe air travel, and keep satellites online — all the things modern life depends on,” Petersen said.