This is an AI Free Zone: AI is everywhere -- except here. Spaceweather.com is written by Dr. Tony Phillips, a carbon-based lifeform with 30 yrs of forecasting experience. If you find a mistake, rest assured it was made by a real human being.
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WEEKEND AURORA WATCH: Geomagnetic storms are possible on Saturday, June 13th, when a halo CME is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. NOAA forecasters are predicting a G2-class (Moderate) storm. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras, especially in the southern hemisphere where autumn darkness favors visibility. CME Impact alerts: SMS Text.
A SPACEX ROCKET IS GOING TO HIT THE MOON: A SpaceX rocket will hit the Moon this summer, and NASA wants your help observing the impact.
On August 5th at 6:35 UTC, a Falcon 9 upper stage left over from the launch of Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander will slam into the Moon near Einstein crater, according to Bill Gray of Project Pluto. The 4-ton rocket body is expected to strike at 2.43 km/s, excavating a fresh crater 10 to 20 meters wide and throwing lunar debris high above the impact site.
Above: A Falcon 9 rocket launches the Blue Ghost lunar lander Jan. 15, 2025.
"Citizen scientists may be able to help us observe this event," said Brian Day of NASA Ames Research Center and SSERVI in a June 12th briefing. "Observers in the Americas will have the best view."
When the rocket hits, it will produce a flash of light, much like natural meteoroids do when they strike the Moon. However, the rocket will be crashing slowly into daylit terrain, and "the flash may be too faint to see," noted Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the same briefing. Indeed, he says, it could be as dim as 17th magnitude.
Of greater interest is the impact plume. Cooke estimates the collision will hurl as much as 800,000 pounds of debris above the lunar surface. If sunlight catches the expanding cloud, it could become bright enough to see above the Moon's limb.
This isn't the first time a rocket has hit the Moon. During the Apollo era, NASA routinely crashed Saturn V rocket stages into the lunar surface to generate moonquakes for seismometers left behind by astronauts. In 2009, NASA's LCROSS mission crashed a 2.3-ton Centaur rocket stage into the lunar south pole in a successful search for water ice.
None of these previous rocket impacts has been convincingly observed by amateur astronomers--so this would be a first if anyone sees it.
Want to try? We will provide updated crash-site coordinates and observing tips as August 5th approaches. Stay tuned!
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free: Space Weather Newsletter
FATHER-SON IRON SCULPTURE: Father’s Day is coming. Are you looking for a far-out gift? Consider the Father-Son Iron Sculpture. Last month, it flew to the stratosphere on board an Earth toSky Calculus cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $149.95. Handcrafted from iron, the sculpture celebrates the special relationship between dads and their sons. There's a statue for father's and daughters, too!
The students are selling Father's Day Gifts to pay the helium bill for their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back again.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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Every night, a network
of
NASA
all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United
States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software
maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office
calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth
in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics.
Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.
On June 11, 2026, the network reported 8 fireballs.
(8 sporadics)
In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue).
[Larger image] [movies]
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (
PHAs)
are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that
can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the
known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet,
although astronomers are finding
new
ones all the time.
On June 12, 2026 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
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Recent
& Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
| Asteroid |
Date(UT) |
Miss Distance |
Velocity (km/s) |
Diameter (m) |
| 2026 LX |
2026-Jun-07 |
0.2 LD |
8.1 |
6 |
| 2018 GE |
2026-Jun-07 |
16.4 LD |
3.1 |
11 |
| 2026 LY |
2026-Jun-07 |
4.8 LD |
17.7 |
26 |
| 2026 LA1 |
2026-Jun-08 |
1.6 LD |
14.3 |
15 |
| 2026 LE1 |
2026-Jun-08 |
3.6 LD |
16.6 |
26 |
| 2026 LT |
2026-Jun-08 |
4.5 LD |
8.3 |
11 |
| 2026 KM3 |
2026-Jun-09 |
6.1 LD |
8.7 |
35 |
| 2026 LD |
2026-Jun-09 |
3 LD |
9.3 |
53 |
| 2026 LM1 |
2026-Jun-09 |
8.6 LD |
13.4 |
33 |
| 2026 LL1 |
2026-Jun-09 |
15.5 LD |
8 |
39 |
| 2026 LB1 |
2026-Jun-10 |
0.7 LD |
3.7 |
4 |
| 2016 VS |
2026-Jun-12 |
20 LD |
11.1 |
12 |
| 2026 LA |
2026-Jun-12 |
19.8 LD |
10 |
38 |
| 530520 |
2026-Jun-12 |
16.1 LD |
14.6 |
152 |
| 2026 LK1 |
2026-Jun-12 |
2.3 LD |
5.8 |
9 |
| 2026 LS1 |
2026-Jun-13 |
0.5 LD |
8.3 |
16 |
| 2026 LF1 |
2026-Jun-13 |
5.1 LD |
10.3 |
26 |
| 2026 LH1 |
2026-Jun-14 |
6.9 LD |
20.6 |
36 |
| 2026 LV |
2026-Jun-16 |
3.1 LD |
5.6 |
14 |
| 2026 LO1 |
2026-Jun-17 |
14.1 LD |
7.5 |
39 |
| 2003 LN6 |
2026-Jun-18 |
3.7 LD |
3.9 |
40 |
| 2026 LQ1 |
2026-Jun-20 |
18.5 LD |
2.7 |
21 |
| 2025 WC4 |
2026-Jun-21 |
10.2 LD |
19.2 |
305 |
| 2015 LM24 |
2026-Jun-22 |
18.2 LD |
13.8 |
71 |
| 152637 |
2026-Jun-27 |
6.7 LD |
8.9 |
947 |
| 523808 |
2026-Jul-04 |
9.1 LD |
16.8 |
479 |
| 2023 YO1 |
2026-Jul-05 |
6.5 LD |
2.7 |
23 |
| 2007 AA2 |
2026-Jul-11 |
17.8 LD |
7.2 |
43 |
| 2025 PN7 |
2026-Jul-17 |
11.6 LD |
2.6 |
19 |
| 2025 MB90 |
2026-Jul-19 |
5.1 LD |
9.6 |
54 |
| 2020 OM |
2026-Jul-21 |
9.1 LD |
9.5 |
15 |
| 2026 KU3 |
2026-Jul-24 |
7.7 LD |
8.6 |
80 |
| 2020 UR1 |
2026-Jul-25 |
18.8 LD |
7.6 |
28 |
| 2015 BF |
2026-Jul-26 |
17.3 LD |
12.5 |
17 |
| 2025 OW |
2026-Jul-30 |
16.1 LD |
20.1 |
70 |
| 2024 RM10 |
2026-Aug-05 |
13.6 LD |
7.5 |
24 |
| 173561 |
2026-Aug-09 |
13.1 LD |
16.2 |
756 |
| 2019 NY2 |
2026-Aug-10 |
6.6 LD |
9.6 |
195 |
| 2016 BV14 |
2026-Aug-10 |
19.1 LD |
21.1 |
162 |
Notes: LD means
"Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance
between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256
AU.
| |
Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere |
SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Almost once a week, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus fly space weather balloons to the stratosphere over California. These balloons are equipped with sensors that detect secondary cosmic rays, a form of radiation from space that can penetrate all the way down to Earth's surface. Our monitoring program has been underway without interruption for 10 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.
Latest results (Nov. 2024): Atmospheric radiation is sharply decreasing in 2024. Our latest measurements in November registered a 10-year low:
What's going on? Ironically, the radiation drop is caused by increasing solar activity. Solar Cycle 25 has roared to life faster than forecasters expected. The sun's strengthening and increasingly tangled magnetic field repels cosmic rays from deep space. In addition, solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays, causing sharp reductions called "Forbush Decreases." The two effects blend together to bring daily radiation levels down.
.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. According to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health, crews of aircraft have higher rates of cancer than the general population. The researchers listed cosmic rays, irregular sleep habits, and chemical contaminants as leading risk factors. A number of controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) go even further, linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
Technical notes: The radiation sensors onboard our helium balloons detect X-rays and gamma-rays in the energy range 10 keV to 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners.
Data points in the graph labeled "Stratospheric Radiation" correspond to the peak of the Regener-Pfotzer maximum, which lies about 67,000 feet above central California. When cosmic rays crash into Earth's atmosphere, they produce a spray of secondary particles that is most intense at the entrance to the stratosphere. Physicists Eric Regener and Georg Pfotzer discovered the maximum using balloons in the 1930s and it is what we are measuring today.
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The
official U.S. government space weather bureau |
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The
first place to look for information about sundogs,
pillars, rainbows and related phenomena. |
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Researchers
call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO
is the most advanced solar observatory ever. |
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3D
views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial
Relations Observatory |
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Realtime
and archival images of the Sun from SOHO. |
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information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary |
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current counts of failed and deployed Starlink satellites from Jonathan's Space Page. See also, all satellite statistics. |
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Authoritative predictions of space junk and satellite re-entries |
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from
the NOAA Space Environment Center |
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fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong. |
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from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| |
the
underlying science of space weather |
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Got a chipped or cracked windshield that prevents you from seeing space weather events while driving? Get windshield replacement from SR Windows & Glass with free mobile auto glass service anywhere in the Phoenix area. |
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