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Space
Space
Science
Samantha Mathewson

Satellite data reveals a huge solar storm in 2024 shrank Earth's protective plasma shield

A pink and green aurora is seen in the sky over some pine trees.

When last year's solar superstorm "Gannon" slammed into Earth, it not only painted the sky with beautiful auroras, but also shrunk one of the planet's protective layers to just one-fifth its usual size.

Data from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Arase satellite revealed the most dramatic collapse of the plasmasphere — a protective layer of charged particles that encircles our planet — ever recorded after the Gannon solar storm struck Earth on May 10, 2024, according to a statement from Nagoya University.

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