Tracking a Solar Storm, From the Sun to the Earth

What happens when a billion tons or more of plasma explodes from the sun at 3 million miles an hour and hit the Earth? Sometimes, not much. Sometimes, a lot.

NASA announced on Thursday that for the first time researchers have seen one of these explosions, known as a coronal mass ejection, from the time it left the surface of the sun to the point where it engulfed the Earth, 93 million miles away. To study the ejection, researchers used NASA's STEREO twin spacecraft; one orbits the sun ahead of the Earth; the other orbits the sun trailing the Earth. To read more, click here.