Two small satellites just gave scientists their clearest look yet at how solar storms meet Earth's shield

High above the poles, the Sun's wind of charged particles slams into Earth's magnetic shield, and their meeting — a snapping and reconnecting of magnetic fields — is what powers auroras and space weather. NASA's twin TRACERS satellites, led by David Miles at the University of Iowa, have now delivered their first results after a year in orbit, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Analysing the first data, Southwest Research Institute's Stephen Fuselier and colleagues found that these reconnection events are mostly a matter of place rather than timing — the action moves across the cusp regions rather than switching on and off. In September, NASA extended the mission into spring 2027, so the watch continues.