Those are some of the details in a new batch of files on UFOs that the Pentagon began releasing on Friday as President Donald Trump taps into the public’s long-held curiosities about “unidentified anomalous phenomena” in the broader universe. Though the Pentagon has been working on declassifying the documents for years, Trump put attention back on the topic months ago by teasing a major UFO document dump.

“Whereas previous Administrations have failed to be transparent on this subject, with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’ Have Fun and Enjoy!” Trump wrote Friday in a Truth Social post.

Trump’s Republican administration says the public can draw its own conclusions with the information in the files, which includes old State Department cables, FBI documents and transcripts from NASA of crewed flights into space. A new Pentagon website housing the documents on UAPs has a decidedly retro feel, with black-and-white military imagery of flying objects displayed prominently on the page, with statements displayed in typewriter-like font.

Experts urge caution around the release of the new files, warning that UAP videos are often misinterpreted and mischaracterized by those unfamiliar with military technology. A 2024 Pentagon report rebutted claims that the U.S. government has recovered alien technology or confirmed evidence of alien life.

Files describe numerous sightings of UAPs

The initial release is a trove of videos, other imagery and testimony that is sure to stir more speculation among those who believe we are not alone in the universe.

For instance, a State Department cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan in 1994 details how one Tajik pilot and three Americans saw a brightly lit UAP while flying a jet over Kazakhstan. The object, according to the cable, was “making 90 degree turns, doing corkscrews and maneuvering in circles at great rates of speed.”

That’s not the only instance of erratically moving objects cited in the document release. A military report from the Aegean Sea in 2023 cited a UAP flying just above the surface of the ocean and making “multiple 90-degree turns at an estimated 80 mph” (129 km/h).

One interview with a U.S. intelligence official details an incident last year in which the official, doing a search on a helicopter, encountered a “super-hot” orb hovering over the ground, traveling about 20 miles (32 kilometers) at a speedy clip, then spotted four or five more orbs that flared up and down.

In a 1969 debriefing of Apollo 11 crew members, the astronaut Aldrin recalled spotting several unusual sights, such as a “sizeable” object close to the moon and a “fairly bright light source” that the crew felt could be a laser.

One document details an FBI interview with someone identified as a drone pilot who, in September 2023, reported seeing a “linear object” with a light bright enough to “see bands within the light” in the sky.

“The object was visible for five to ten seconds and then the light went out and the object vanished,” according to the FBI interview.

Another file is a NASA photograph from the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, showing three dots in a triangular formation. The Pentagon says in an accompanying caption that “there is no consensus about the nature of the anomaly” but that a new, preliminary analysis indicated that it could be a “physical object.”

The documents include more than 20 video files showing unidentified objects captured by military sensors in locations from Syria and Japan to North America. The objects range from fast-moving specks captured in the distance to a football-shaped object spotted over the East China Sea in 2022. The most recent video is from Jan. 1 of this year and appears to show two circular lights flying against an inky black backdrop in North America.

Several files include military videos from the past several years that showed small ambiguous dots moving above the landscapes of Iraq, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. The white objects sometimes streaked across the screen in less than a second, while others slowly glided through the air or were followed by the camera.

Other files include written reports from U.S. military service members who were surveilling locations in the Middle East. One report described an object that was “shaped as a bouncy ball” and traveling 483 mph (777 km/h) consistently for at least seven minutes over Syria in 2023.

The object was later determined to be benign.

Among the files are hundreds of pages detailing reported sightings dating to the 1940s. A 1948 report from U.S. airmen in the Netherlands raised concerns about recurring flying saucer sightings. Swedish counterparts saw them, too, and believed they did not come from “any presently known culture on earth,” the report said.

One military video that quickly caught attention on Friday appears to show an aircraft shaped like an eight-pointed star weaving through the air. The video, from 2013 in the Middle East, is probably nothing more than a hot jet engine producing a diffraction pattern in the camera, said Sean Kirkpatrick, a former director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which investigates UAP.

Kirkpatrick said there’s nothing unexpected in the release and warned that without analysis it will “only serve to fuel more speculation, conspiracy and arm-chair pseudoscience.”

Trump administration touts transp

arency on UFO file release

Trump has previously released records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. that revealed little beyond what was already known.

The Pentagon has been working on declassifying documents related to UFOs for years, and Congress created an office in 2022 to declassify material. Its 2024 debut report revealed hundreds of new UAP incidents but found no evidence that the U.S. government had ever confirmed a sighting of alien technology.

A small group of Republicans in Congress has pressed for further transparency, accusing the Pentagon of holding documents back. A March letter from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., demanded 46 UAP videos identified by whistleblowers. Luna said Friday those videos will be released later by the Pentagon.

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., thanked Trump for “keeping his word” on transparency and disclosure.

“I would like to remind people that transparency won’t all happen at once, it will take some time,” Burchett said in a statement.

Others used Friday’s release to urge further transparency into what the government knows about UAPs. The Sol Foundation, a research group focused on UAPs, pushed for passage of legislation that would force a “thorough” review of classified UAP records “with the aim of providing Americans with the full truth about longstanding government knowledge and programs concerning technologies and vehicles not of human origin.”

“While today’s new step toward a full disclosure of government knowledge concerning UAP is welcome, many more need to be taken to bring an end to the decades of secrecy by which the American people were kept in the dark,” said Peter Skafish, the foundation’s executive director, and retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, a former acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency.

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NASA’s colossal Space Launch System rocket lifted off at 3:35 p.m. Pacific time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marking the start of the 10-day Artemis II mission.

In the hours and minutes leading up to launch, as the astronauts waited aboard, NASA engineers troubleshooted minor issues with the 30-story-tall rocket. First, the teams identified an issue with the hardware that communicates with a system designed to detonate the rocket to protect public safety if the rocket veers off course. Next, there was a fluke temperature reading on the Launch Abort System, designed to pull the crew to safety during such an event. Finally, they managed a brief telemetry issue with the capsule.

All were ultimately resolved, and the agency proceeded.

“On this historic mission, you take with you the heart of this Artemis team, the daring spirit of the American people and our partners across the globe, and the hopes and dreams of a new generation,” Artemis II launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said to the crew minutes before launch. “Good luck. Godspeed, Artemis II. Let’s go.”

In a few days’ time, the four astronauts aboard will perform a flyby of the moon — they will not land on the surface nor will they enter the moon’s orbit. Instead, the flyby is designed as an essential stepping-stone mission to test the rocket, human life support systems and flight procedures ahead of a lunar landing, which NASA hopes to pull off in 2028.

This includes studies on the astronauts’ sleep and mental health, as well as how deep-space radiation and microgravity affect organs and immune system. The crew will also practice manually piloting the spacecraft while still close to Earth.

NASA expects the crew to reach the moon Monday morning, around 10 a.m. Pacific time. As the astronauts pass the far side of the moon, NASA expects to temporarily lose communication with the crew, who will focus on documenting and analyzing the rugged lunar surface. Around this point, NASA anticipates the crew will break the Apollo 13 crew’s record for the farthest distance any human has traveled from Earth.

The crew will then begin their four-day return. The crew capsule is set to slam into the Earth’s atmosphere at roughly 30 times the speed of sound — potentially making it the fastest reentry of a crewed capsule in history — on April 10. NASA anticipates the crew will splash down off the coast of San Diego around 5 p.m. Pacific time.

The mission, made possible by scientists, engineers and support crews across the country and world, has a touch of Southern California, too.

Victor Glover, the astronaut piloting the mission, was once a kid in the Pomona Valley, watching the space shuttle launch on TV and dreaming of driving the thing. He cut his teeth as a test pilot out in the Mojave, attending test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base and serving on a Navy test pilot squadron in China Lake, Calif.

If the mission is successful, Glover will become the first Black person to travel to the moon. With him will be the first woman to do so, NASA astronaut Christina Koch, and the first non-American to do so, Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. Not to be outdone by his crewmates, mission commander Reid Wiseman, at 50, will be the oldest to do so.

NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center inside Edwards Air Force Base is also conducting critical research and testing for the mission. They supported two tests of the rocket’s Launch Abort System — designed to accelerate from 0 to 500 mph in just two seconds to literally outrun the debris of an exploding rocket — in the 2010s. (The rocket discarded the abort system after the crew safely escaped the majority of Earth’s atmosphere.)

During reentry, the center will participate in a high-speed relay of military and civilian planes to chase the capsule and measure how the heat shield performs with high-tech telescopes and sensors. Artemis II is testing out a new reentry trajectory after an uncrewed test mission in 2022 resulted in unexpected damage to the heat shield.

Finally, once the capsule safely splashes down off San Diego, NASA and U.S. Navy divers will secure the capsule, with medical staff from both on standby. A Navy ship will then bring the capsule back to Naval Base San Diego, right next to the city’s downtown.

The Artemis program ultimately aims to land humans back on the moon, help the space agency establish a lunar base and serve as the testing grounds for future missions to Mars.

NASA plans to launch Artemis III, a mission in Earth’s orbit to test docking the NASA spacecraft with SpaceX’s and Blue Origin’s lunar landers, in 2027. It aspires to launch Artemis IV, which would put humans on the surface of the moon, in 2028.

“Artemis II is the opening act,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman shortly before launch. “We’re going into the golden age of science and discovery right now.”

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    Victor Glover, a Pomona-born astronaut and former Ontario High School athlete, is set to become the first Black person to travel to the moon. The mission will not include a landing, but the crew will fly past the moon — the first time humans have done so in more than 50 years.

    Glover, 49, is no stranger to making history. In 2020, he became the first Black astronaut to serve on a long-duration expedition aboard the International Space Station.

    For some, that milestone came as a shock. Livingston Holder, a former Air Force manned spaceflight engineer and space shuttle payload specialist, said he could hardly believe it when he first learned no Black astronaut had previously spent extended time living aboard the station.

    “That cannot be right,” Holder recalled thinking. “How could it take that long?”

    While Black astronauts had participated in earlier shuttle missions and contributed to building the station, none had stayed for months as part of a full expedition crew until Glover’s mission.

    Even so, Glover has often downplayed the significance of being “the first,” choosing instead to focus on the broader purpose of space exploration — and the people who came before him.

    Holder, whose own opportunity to fly was canceled after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, said Glover has always carried himself as a team-oriented astronaut rather than someone seeking individual recognition.

    Glover’s path to that moment wasn’t guaranteed. In 2018, astronaut Jeanette Epps had been slated to become the first Black astronaut assigned to a long-term ISS mission, but she was removed from the flight without public explanation.

    His time in space also coincided with difficult moments back on Earth. Just months before his ISS mission launched, the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked nationwide protests and conversations about racial injustice — a reality Glover, like many others, had to process while orbiting the planet.

    The tension between progress in space and struggles on Earth is not new. The Apollo era itself unfolded during the height of the civil rights movement, when critics questioned whether the nation’s resources were being spent in the right places.

    To stay grounded, Glover has spoken about listening to Whitey on the Moon by Gil Scott-Heron during training — a piece that reflects those same questions about inequality and progress.

    For Glover, though, the mission is about opportunity — not just for himself, but for others who may follow.

    “Every time someone is first, it opens the door for the next person,” Holder said, noting the impact role models can have on future generations.

    Glover’s own story begins in Pomona, where he was born in 1976 and raised by parents who encouraged his curiosity. His father worked as a police officer, his mother as a bookkeeper, and both supported his wide-ranging ambitions — from athletics to engineering.

    As a teenager at Ontario High School, Glover competed in multiple sports, including wrestling, football and track. Teachers remembered him as bright, focused and independent.

    “He was always going to find his own path,” said Gregg Givens, a former teacher and coach at the school.

    After earning a degree in engineering, Glover joined the Navy in 1998. Over the next 15 years, he logged more than 3,500 flight hours across dozens of aircraft and flew 24 combat missions, while also earning advanced degrees.

    He later trained as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base, following a path similar to early astronauts like Neil Armstrong.

    Glover was selected as part of NASA’s astronaut class in 2013, chosen from more than 6,000 applicants. Since then, he has built a reputation as both a skilled pilot and a dedicated family man — often checking in from space to help his four daughters with homework.

    On Artemis II, he will be joined by a diverse crew that includes Christina Koch, who is set to become the first woman to travel to the moon, and Jeremy Hansen, who will be the first non-American to make the journey.

    For Holder and others who paved the way, watching Glover’s mission is deeply personal.

    Before launch, Holder visited a communications station in Australia that will help relay signals between the spacecraft and Earth. From there, he sent a message to Glover that reflects what the mission represents to many.

    “Through you,” he said, “we all go to the moon.”

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Still, if the skies remain cloud-free, California will enjoy an impressive partial eclipse that will feature the moon taking a bite out of the late-morning sun.

In Los Angeles, about half of the sun will be visibly covered by the moon, and in San Francisco, one-third will be. The northernmost parts of the state will see the smallest amount of the eclipse, while cities to the south will experience more. In Crescent City, in coastal Del Norte County, about 25% of the sun will be eclipsed; in Holtville, near the Mexican border in Imperial County, up to 58% of the sun will be blocked.

It’ll be the last partial solar eclipse for L.A. and San Francisco until 2029.

The event has generated considerable buzz, as it will be the last total solar eclipse seen from the contiguous United States until 2044. The last one was in 2017, and before that, in 1979. Last October’s “ring of fire” solar eclipse was not total but “annular,” in which the moon was a bit farther away from Earth and short of completely blotting out the sun, thus leaving a glowing ring around it.

2024 solar eclipse

On April 8, parts of the United States will experience a total solar eclipse. The rest of the continental U.S. will be able to see a partial eclipse. Map shows the path of totality arcing through parts of Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and New England.

Cities in a narrow, 115-mile “path of totality” — where the moon completely blocks the sun’s visible surface — include Mazatlán, Mexico; Dallas; Indianapolis; Cleveland; Niagara Falls, N.Y.; and Sherbrooke, Canada. An estimated 31.5 million live in the path of totality, and about 200 million others are within a few hours’ drive. Far more people live in or near the eclipse’s path compared with those in 2017 and 1979.

What makes this solar eclipse particularly notable is that the entire contiguous U.S., as well as parts of Alaska and Hawaii, will be able to view at least a partial eclipse, allowing for a national experience.

But there’s a risk of heartbreak for eclipse aficionados if clouds roll in. Overcast skies will still darken in the path of totality, but “it’s obviously not as much fun as observing a solar eclipse in a cloud-free sky,” said Jean-Luc Margot, a UCLA professor of planetary astronomy.

In Los Angeles, the partial solar eclipse will start at 10:06 a.m., and a substantial bite of the sun will be obvious by 10:39 a.m., peaking at 11:12 a.m. By 12:22 p.m., it will be over, according to the Griffith Observatory.

NASA offers an eclipse explorer map, at go.nasa.gov/EclipseExplorer, with data for U.S. cities.

“You will be able to see a small, little, bite-sized chunk that the moon is taking out of the sun as it blocks some of its light,” said Dakotah Tyler, an astrophysics doctoral student at UCLA who also makes science videos on social media. “So that’s still a really cool thing to see, even if you’re not in the path of totality.”

You should not look at the sun directly during any phase of a partial solar eclipse. And relying only on regular sunglasses, smoked glass or polarizing filters is also not safe.

“It is very dangerous to look at the partially eclipsed sun directly with your own eyes,” said Ed Krupp, the longtime director of the Griffith Observatory. “You’re tempted to do it, but it will burn the retinas permanently and cause permanent blindness.”

In one documented case, a young woman who looked at the 2017 solar eclipse for 20 seconds without eye protection suffered permanent eye damage with no known treatment, according to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai. Within hours, her eyesight became blurry and she could see only the color black. Doctors found she had crescent-shaped retinal damage, which was the “shape of the visible portion of the sun during the partial solar eclipse in New York City,” the facility said.

“You need eye protection. That’s crucial,” Margot said.

People should obtain eclipse glasses or handheld sun filters, but buy them from reputable retailers. NASA says safe solar viewers should comply with the ISO 12312-2 international standard, adopted in 2015. Those made with this standard can be used indefinitely as long as they aren’t damaged, the American Astronomical Society says, so those left over from the 2017 eclipse are safe to use if they aren’t torn, scratched or punctured, or the filters aren’t coming loose from the cardboard of plastic frames.

Beware, though: Some eclipse glasses are labeled ISO-compliant but haven’t been properly tested, the society said. “Don’t pick up your eclipse glasses on some street corner. People make fake ones now, and it’s quite problematic,” Krupp said. The American Astronomical Society posts a list of North American manufacturers and importers whose products are safe if used properly.

Some experts also warn against staring at the eclipse for minutes on end, even with proper eye protection. Krupp suggests looking up for just a moment, to see the progress, and then waiting 10 minutes or so before seeing how it looks again.

“Just because you have a filter, or eclipse glasses, doesn’t mean that it’s safe … to keep staring and staring. That’s the last thing you want to do,” Krupp said.

Another way to monitor the eclipse’s progression is through a pinhole camera, which can be made by poking a hole in a piece of aluminum foil or paper with a safety pin, paper clip or pencil, and projecting the image of the sun onto the ground. Holding up a colander can also project the partial eclipse onto the ground, as can looking at sunlight dappling through a tree’s leaves, or through your fingers aligned perpendicularly.

People using binoculars, camera lenses and telescopes need to mount proper solar filters on the outermost lenses receiving light, filtering the powerful rays before they enter the device. Otherwise, the sunlight will be concentrated, and instant, severe eye injury can occur, NASA warns.

For those interested in taking photos of the eclipse with their smartphone, Krupp suggested shooting wide-angle views. The sun will appear pretty small, “but you’ve got the landscape around there” — similar to how people take photographs of sunrises and sunsets.

There will be eclipse viewing parties across California, including at the California Science Center in South L.A., Caltech and Cal State L.A. (An event at the Mt. Wilson Observatory was canceled.) A number of public libraries across Los Angeles County also will hold viewing parties, and eclipse glasses will be available as long as supplies last.

One notable place that won’t host an in-person watch party is Griffith Observatory. Instead, it will broadcast the total solar eclipse live from Belton, Texas. The Griffith Observatory Foundation is leading a viewing trip there as well as to Mazatlán, Mexico, where Krupp will be.

A big worry for eclipse chasers seeking to be in the path of totality is the weather. Unlike the Aug. 21, 2017, total solar eclipse, which was blessed with sunny skies for many, this April could be a different story.

“I’m calling this eclipse — April 8, 2024 — the ‘heartbreaker’ because we know the saying: ‘April showers bring May flowers.’ So dodging the clouds is going to be anything but a trivial task for this particular eclipse,” Jeremy Veldman, president of the Memphis Astronomical Society, said in a YouTube video that covered 45 years of weather satellite photos for previous April 8 dates, as compiled by the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies.

A detailed analysis of past climate conditions for April, between 2000 and 2020, posted on the website Eclipsophile, said the probability of cloudiness increases the farther north you go.

But climate averages are useful only if you’re planning years in advance. There have been times on April 8, Veldman said, such as in 2019, where “no matter where you go, there’s the likelihood you’re gonna be dodging clouds,” with the exception of southern Texas. But sometimes, like on April 8, 1994, southern Texas was cloudy but other areas farther north were largely clear, even New York.

The Eclipsophile analysis said that now is the time to start looking at long- and short-range forecasts.

The call about where to go is mixed. Some have well-laid plans and say they’ll stay put, no matter what. Other die-hard eclipse chasers may have multiple contingencies “so that they can change based on the weather,” NASA astrophysicist Kelly Korreck said at a briefing in January.

But deciding to move locations too late could leave you stuck in traffic. “Even interstates will come to a halt when the eclipse is imminent,” the Eclipsophile analysis said.

For those lucky enough to experience totality and who are positioned along the eclipse’s center line, it’ll be a relatively long event, generally 3½ to 4 minutes, depending on location. By contrast, the longest duration of the 2017 total solar eclipse, near Carbondale, Ill., was about 2 minutes, 40 seconds.

Veteran eclipse watchers say those in the path of totality can expect a transcendental experience. The last moment of sunlight that’s blocked out by the moon “produces a bright, bright spot on the dark disk of the sun,” Krupp said, referred to as a “diamond ring.”

If skies are clear, you might notice a “distinct column of the shadow of the moon — this cylindrical shadow column — moving toward you,” said Tim Thompson, the science director for Mt. Wilson Observatory. Once you’re in the shadow, the temperature can drop; during his total solar eclipse experience in Idaho in 2017, the temperature dropped by 20 degrees.

Then, a moment later, the moon will completely block the sun’s surface.

“It’s like somebody threw a switch. The sun is completely blocked by the moon. The darkness of the eclipsed sun is darker than the sky around it,” Krupp said. “It seems like the deepest black that you’ve ever seen, particularly in contrast with the rest of the sky — which has grown dark, but not nighttime dark.”

Animals may react strangely, thinking it’s nighttime, and it can feel like “you’ve got this wraparound sunrise-sunset,” Krupp said. “You’re looking out in every direction from where you are in the middle of the shadow.”

Added Thompson: “It’s that sunrise-sunset effect all along the horizon. You can’t see that kind of thing, ever, except during a total eclipse.”

For those in the zone of totality, that’s the only time it’s safe to take off eclipse glasses and watch with the naked eye, NASA says. People may be able to see the sun’s corona, the outer solar atmosphere, that’s superheated to millions of degrees — hotter than the surface of the sun, Tyler said.

“The corona is a very bright white, and very obvious. And you never see anything like that unless it’s a total eclipse,” Thompson said. “The contrast between that and the moon is so extreme — the moon becomes the blackest thing you’ve ever seen. … It’s just like a hole punched in the universe.”

Krupp described the corona as a “pearly whitish halo of light around the sun, but has streamers going in various directions.” Another feature that can be seen are flame-like structures called prominences on the edge of the sun, showing up in contrast to the white light of the corona. They are coming out of the chromosphere, “which is shining with the red light of hydrogen at a particular temperature. And that looks sort of like a little arc of red, just depending on where you get it. It hugs the dark disk of the sun,” Krupp said.

Thompson suggested those attending their first total solar eclipse not bother with special viewing equipment during totality. “If you’ve never done it before, then you don’t want to be distracted by anything,” Thompson said. “Don’t take telescopes, don’t try to photograph it. Maybe hold up your cellphone camera and take a click or something. … But it’s all about being there and being part of the experience.”

It’s a marvel that solar eclipses happen in such perfect formation between Earth, the moon and the sun.

There’s “this amazing cosmic coincidence that the size of the moon and the size of the sun — in an angular sense — are about the same,” Margot said. “Even though the sun is 400 times larger than the moon … it also happens to be 400 times further away.”

Those in the path of totality should keep an eye on the time — perhaps using a timer or alarm — to know when to put their eclipse glasses back on.

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Space weather forecasters expect March to be the best month in two decades to see the curtains of mostly green but also pink, purple and red that normally are confined to areas around Earth’s North Pole.

When conditions are right, the phenomenon can be seen as far south as Florida and Arizona, Business Insider reports. In April of last year, it was photographed over Mt. Shasta in Northern California.

There are a couple of reasons March could be an opportunity for more Americans to see the northern lights.

One is that solar activity, which plays a crucial role in the appearance of northern lights, ramps up around the time of the seasonal equinoxes (the vernal, or spring, equinox is on Tuesday, March 19). Historically, March has seen more auroras than any other month, although October, the first full month after the autumnal, or fall, equinox, is a close second, according to a NASA study of 75 years worth of data.

April and September were the third- and fourth-busiest months for auroras.

The biggest aurora event of 2023 occurred last March, when a series of solar activities triggered auroras powerful enough to be seen in places along the country’s southern border.

Geomagnetic storms on our star’s surface cause coronal holes that spew out electronically charged particles carried millions of miles by solar wind into Earth’s magnetic field. Around the time of the equinoxes, the sun and Earth’s poles are aligned almost perpendicularly, which allows more of the wind to make it through.

Secondly, the “solar maximum” peak of an 11-year solar cycle in which the sun’s magnetic fields flip between the North and South poles is expected to occur this year. Like Earth, the sun has negative and positive polarity. During the reversal of polarity, negative becomes positive and positive becomes negative, and that creates more sunspots and space weather events.

The frequency of CMEs, which are huge bubbles of coronal plasma threaded by magnetic field lines, varies during each solar cycle — about once a week at solar minimum, but an average of two or three a day at solar maximum.

The current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 25, is expected to reach solar maximum in 2024, a year ahead of schedule, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

People who live in places like Alaska, Canada and Greenland, which are near Earth’s North Pole, have the best chances of seeing the ethereal auroras. But the powerful eruptions have made the northern lights more common over the past several months, sending the northern lights far south into states like Florida, Texas and Arizona.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Orion capsule entered an orbit stretching tens of thousands of miles around the moon Friday, as it neared the halfway mark of its test flight.

The capsule and its three test dummies entered lunar orbit more than a week after launching on the $4 billion demo that’s meant to pave the way for astronauts. It will remain in this broad but stable orbit for nearly a week, completing just half a lap before heading home.

As of Friday’s engine firing, the capsule was 238,000 miles (380,000 kilometers) from Earth. It’s expected to reach a maximum distance of almost 270,000 miles (432,000 kilometers) in a few days. That will set a new distance record for a capsule designed to carry people one day.

“It is a statistic, but it’s symbolic for what it represents,” Jim Geffre, an Orion manager, said in a NASA interview earlier in the week. “It’s about challenging ourselves to go farther, stay longer and push beyond the limits of what we’ve previously explored.”

NASA considers this a dress rehearsal for the next moon flyby in 2024, with astronauts. A lunar landing by astronauts could follow as soon as 2025. Astronauts last visited the moon 50 years ago during Apollo 17.

Earlier in the week, Mission Control in Houston lost contact with the capsule for nearly an hour. At the time, controllers were adjusting the communication link between Orion and the Deep Space Network. Officials said the spacecraft remained healthy.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA managed to plug a leak late Tuesday night while fueling its new moon rocket for a middle-of-the-night launch, its third try to put an empty capsule around the moon for the first time in 50 years.

Hydrogen fuel sprouted from a valve on the launch pad — a different location than leaks during previous launch attempts. Two technicians and a safety official rushed into the blast zone to tighten the valve, with emergency rescue workers on standby.

The quick repair fixed the leak, allowing hydrogen to resume flowing into the rocket. But then a Space Force radar tracking site went down because of a bad ethernet switch, leading to yet another scramble. The problems pushed the launch into the wee hours of Wednesday, as the countdown clocks held at the 10-minute mark.

“We are slipping indefinitely into the launch window,” said NASA launch commentator Derrol Nail.

“uel leaks plagued the first two attempts in late summer, then a pair of hurricanes caused more delays. While engineers never pinpointed the cause of the escaping hydrogen, they altered the fueling process to minimize leakage and expressed confidence that all the plumbing in the 322-foot (98-meter) rocket would remain tight and intact.

NASA added an hour to the operation to account for the slower fill-up, vital for reducing pressure on the fuel lines and keeping the seals in place. It seemed to work, but an intermittent hydrogen leak cropped up near the end of the six-hour operation. This particular leaky valve is on the launch platform, not the rocket, officials stressed, and is needed to replenish liquid hydrogen as it dissipates from the core stage.

The rocket was gassed up with nearly 1 million gallons (3.7 million liters) of super-cold hydrogen and oxygen, when the latest leak occurred.

NASA expected 15,000 to jam Kennedy Space Center for the launch in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, with thousands more lining the beaches and roads outside the gates. The space agency had two hours to get the rocket off, before standing down until Saturday.

The debut of the Space Launch System rocket, known as SLS, had three test dummies but no astronauts inside the crew capsule on top, which NASA hoped to put into lunar orbit.

This first test flight was expected to last three weeks, ending with a splashdown in the Pacific. NASA’s top priority for the $4.1 billion mission is to verify the capsule’s heat shield during reentry, so four astronauts can strap in for the next moonshot in 2024. That would be followed by a two-person lunar landing in 2025.

NASA last sent astronauts to the moon in December 1972, closing out the Apollo program.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft rammed an asteroid at blistering speed Monday in an unprecedented dress rehearsal for the day a killer rock menaces Earth.

The galactic slam occurred at a harmless asteroid 7 million miles (11.3 million kilometers) away, with the spacecraft named Dart plowing into the space rock at 14,000 mph (22,500 kph). Scientists expected the impact to carve out a crater, hurl streams of rocks and dirt into space and, most importantly, alter the asteroid’s orbit.

“We have impact!” Mission Control’s Elena Adams announced, jumping up and down and thrusting her arms skyward.

Telescopes around the world and in space aimed at the same point in the sky to capture the spectacle. Though the impact was immediately obvious — Dart’s radio signal abruptly ceased — it will take as long as a couple of months to determine how much the asteroid’s path was changed.

The $325 million mission was the first attempt to shift the position of an asteroid or any other natural object in space.

“As far as we can tell, our first planetary defense test was a success,” Adams later told a news conference, the room filling with applause. “I think Earthlings should sleep better. Definitely, I will.”

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson reminded people earlier in the day via Twitter that, “No, this is not a movie plot.” He added in a prerecorded video: ”We’ve all seen it on movies like “Armageddon,” but the real-life stakes are high.”

Monday’s target: a 525-foot (160-meter) asteroid named Dimorphos. It’s a moonlet of Didymos, Greek for twin, a fast-spinning asteroid five times bigger that flung off the material that formed the junior partner.

The pair have been orbiting the sun for eons without threatening Earth, making them ideal save-the-world test candidates.

Launched last November, the vending machine-size Dart — short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test — navigated to its target using new technology developed by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, the spacecraft builder and mission manager.

Dart’s on-board camera, a key part of this smart navigation system, caught sight of Dimorphos barely an hour before impact. “Woo hoo!” exclaimed Adams, a mission systems engineer at Johns Hopkins.

With an image beaming back to Earth every second, Adams and other ground controllers in Laurel, Maryland, watched with growing excitement as Dimorphos loomed larger and larger in the field of view alongside its bigger companion. Within minutes, Dimorphos was alone in the pictures; it looked like a giant gray lemon, but with boulders and rubble on the surface. The last image froze on the screen as the radio transmission ended.

Flight controllers cheered, hugged one another and exchanged high fives. Their mission complete, the Dart team went straight into celebration mode. There was little sorrow over the spacecraft’s demise.

“Normally, losing signal from a spacecraft is a very bad thing. But in this case, it was the ideal outcome,” said NASA program scientist Tom Statler.

Johns Hopkins scientist Carolyn Ernst said the spacecraft was definitely “kaput,” with remnants possibly in the fresh crater or cascading into space with the asteroid’s ejected material.

Scientists insisted Dart would not shatter Dimorphos. The spacecraft packed a scant 1,260 pounds (570 kilograms), compared with the asteroid’s 11 billion pounds (5 billion kilograms). But that should be plenty to shrink its 11-hour, 55-minute orbit around Didymos.

The impact should pare 10 minutes off that. The anticipated orbital shift of 1% might not sound like much, scientists noted. But they stressed it would amount to a significant change over years.

“Now is when the science starts,” said NASA’s Lori Glaze, planetary science division director. “Now we’re going to see for real how effective we were.”

Planetary defense experts prefer nudging a threatening asteroid or comet out of the way, given enough lead time, rather than blowing it up and creating multiple pieces that could rain down on Earth. Multiple impactors might be needed for big space rocks or a combination of impactors and so-called gravity tractors, not-yet-invented devices that would use their own gravity to pull an asteroid into a safer orbit.

“The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program to help them know what was coming, but we do,” NASA’s senior climate adviser Katherine Calvin said, referring to the mass extinction 66 million years ago believed to have been caused by a major asteroid impact, volcanic eruptions or both.

The non-profit B612 Foundation, dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid strikes, has been pushing for impact tests like Dart since its founding by astronauts and physicists 20 years ago. Monday’s feat aside, the world must do a better job of identifying the countless space rocks lurking out there, warned the foundation’s executive director, Ed Lu, a former astronaut.

Significantly less than half of the estimated 25,000 near-Earth objects in the deadly 460-foot (140-meter) range have been discovered, according to NASA. And fewer than 1% of the millions of smaller asteroids, capable of widespread injuries, are known.

The Vera Rubin Observatory, nearing completion in Chile by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Energy Department, promises to revolutionize the field of asteroid discovery, Lu noted.

Finding and tracking asteroids, “That’s still the name of the game here. That’s the thing that has to happen in order to protect the Earth,” he said.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Years late and billions over budget, NASA’s new moon rocket makes its debut next week in a high-stakes test flight before astronauts get on top.

The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket will attempt to send an empty crew capsule into a far-flung lunar orbit, 50 years after NASA’s famed Apollo moonshots.

If all goes well, astronauts could strap in as soon as 2024 for a lap around the moon, with NASA aiming to land two people on the lunar surface by the end of 2025.

Liftoff is set for Monday morning from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

The six-week test flight is risky and could be cut short if something fails, NASA officials warn.

“We’re going to stress it and test it. We’re going make it do things that we would never do with a crew on it in order to try to make it as safe as possible,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The retired founder of George Washington University’s space policy institute said a lot is riding on this trial run. Spiraling costs and long gaps between missions will make for a tough comeback if things go south, he noted.

“It is supposed to be the first step in a sustained program of human exploration of the moon, Mars, and beyond,” said John Logsdon. “Will the United States have the will to push forward in the face of a major malfunction?”

The price tag for this single mission: more than $4 billion. Add everything up since the program’s inception a decade ago until a 2025 lunar landing, and there’s even more sticker shock: $93 billion.

Here’s a rundown of the first flight of the Artemis program, named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister.

ROCKET POWER

The new rocket is shorter and slimmer than the Saturn V rockets that hurled 24 Apollo astronauts to the moon a half-century ago. But it’s mightier, packing 8.8 million pounds (4 million kilograms) of thrust. It’s called the Space Launch System rocket, SLS for short, but a less clunky name is under discussion, according to Nelson. Unlike the streamlined Saturn V, the new rocket has a pair of strap-on boosters refashioned from NASA’s space shuttles. The boosters will peel away after two minutes, just like the shuttle boosters did, but won’t be fished from the Atlantic for reuse. The core stage will keep firing before separating and crashing into the Pacific in pieces. Two hours after liftoff, an upper stage will send the capsule, Orion, racing toward the moon.

MOONSHIP

NASA’s high-tech, automated Orion capsule is named after the constellation, among the night sky’s brightest. At 11 feet (3 meters) tall, it’s roomier than Apollo’s capsule, seating four astronauts instead of three. For this test flight, a full-size dummy in an orange flight suit will occupy the commander’s seat, rigged with vibration and acceleration sensors. Two other mannequins made of material simulating human tissue — heads and female torsos, but no limbs — will measure cosmic radiation, one of the biggest risks of spaceflight. One torso is testing a protective vest from Israel. Unlike the rocket, Orion has launched before, making two laps around Earth in 2014. This time, the European Space Agency’s service module will be attached for propulsion and solar power via four wings.

FLIGHT PLAN

Orion’s flight is supposed to last six weeks from its Florida liftoff to Pacific splashdown, twice as long as astronaut trips in order to tax the systems. It will take nearly a week to reach the moon, 240,000 miles (386,000 kilometers) away. After whipping closely around the moon, the capsule will enter a distant orbit with a far point of 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers). That will put Orion 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) from Earth, farther than Apollo. The big test comes at mission’s end, as Orion hits the atmosphere at 25,000 mph (40,000 kph) on its way to a splashdown in the Pacific. The heat shield uses the same material as the Apollo capsules to withstand reentry temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,750 degrees Celsius). But the advanced design anticipates the faster, hotter returns by future Mars crews.

HITCHHIKERS

Besides three test dummies, the flight has a slew of stowaways for deep space research. Ten shoebox-size satellites will pop off once Orion is hurtling toward the moon. The problem is these so-called CubeSats were installed in the rocket a year ago, and the batteries for half of them couldn’t be recharged as the launch kept getting delayed. NASA expects some to fail, given the low-cost, high-risk nature of these mini satellites. The radiation-measuring CubeSats should be OK. Also in the clear: a solar sail demo targeting an asteroid. In a back-to-the-future salute, Orion will carry a few slivers of moon rocks collected by Apollo 11′s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969, and a bolt from one of their rocket engines, salvaged from the sea a decade ago. Aldrin isn’t attending the launch, according to NASA, but three of his former colleagues will be there: Apollo 7′s Walter Cunningham, Apollo 10′s Tom Stafford and Apollo 17′s Harrison Schmitt, the next-to-last man to walk on the moon.

APOLLO VS. ARTEMIS

More than 50 years later, Apollo still stands as NASA’s greatest achievement. Using 1960s technology, NASA took just eight years to go from launching its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, and landing Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon. By contrast, Artemis already has dragged on for more than a decade, despite building on the short-lived moon exploration program Constellation. Twelve Apollo astronauts walked on the moon from 1969 through 1972, staying no longer than three days at a time. For Artemis, NASA will be drawing from a diverse astronaut pool currently numbering 42 and is extending the time crews will spend on the moon to at least a week. The goal is to create a long-term lunar presence that will grease the skids for sending people to Mars. NASA’s Nelson, promises to announce the first Artemis moon crews once Orion is back on Earth.

WHAT’S NEXT

There’s a lot more to be done before astronauts step on the moon again. A second test flight will send four astronauts around the moon and back, perhaps as early as 2024. A year or so later, NASA aims to send another four up, with two of them touching down at the lunar south pole. Orion doesn’t come with its own lunar lander like the Apollo spacecraft did, so NASA has hired Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide its Starship spacecraft for the first Artemis moon landing. Two other private companies are developing moonwalking suits. The sci-fi-looking Starship would link up with Orion at the moon and take a pair of astronauts to the surface and back to the capsule for the ride home. So far, Starship has only soared six miles (10 kilometers). Musk wants to launch Starship around Earth on SpaceX’s Super Heavy Booster before attempting a moon landing without a crew. One hitch: Starship will need a fill-up at an Earth-orbiting fuel depot, before heading to the moon.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s new moon rocket arrived at the launch pad Wednesday ahead of its debut flight in less than two weeks.

The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket emerged from its mammoth hangar late Tuesday night, drawing crowds of Kennedy Space Center workers, many of whom were not yet born when NASA sent astronauts to the moon a half-century ago. It took nearly 10 hours for the rocket to make the four-mile trip to the pad, pulling up at sunrise.

NASA is aiming for an Aug. 29 liftoff for the lunar test flight. No one will be inside the crew capsule atop the rocket, just three mannequins swarming with sensors to measure radiation and vibration.

The capsule will fly around the moon in a distant orbit for a couple weeks, before heading back for a splashdown in the Pacific. The entire flight should last six weeks.

The flight is the first moonshot in NASA’s Artemis program. The space agency is aiming for a lunar-orbiting flight with astronauts in two years and a lunar landing by a human crew as early as 2025. That’s much later than NASA anticipated when it established the program more than a decade ago, as the space shuttle fleet retired. The years of delays have added billions of dollars to the cost.

“Now for the first time since 1972, we’re going to be launching a rocket that’s designed for deep space,” NASA’s rocket program manager, John Honeycutt, said recently.

NASA’s new SLS moon rocket, short for Space Launch System, is 41 feet (12 meters) shorter than the Saturn V rockets used during Apollo a half-century ago. But it’s more powerful, using a core stage and twin strap-on boosters, similar to the ones used for the space shuttles.

“When you look at the rocket, it almost looks retro. It looks like we’re looking back toward the Saturn V,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters earlier this month. “But it’s a totally different, new, highly sophisticated, more sophisticated rocket and spacecraft.”

Twenty-four astronauts flew to the moon during Apollo, with 12 of them landing on it from 1969 through 1972. The space agency wants a more diverse team and more sustained effort under Artemis, named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister.

“I want to underscore that this is a test flight,” Nelson said. “It’s just the beginning.”

This was the rocket’s third trip to the pad. A countdown test in April was marred by fuel leaks and other equipment trouble, forcing NASA to return the rocket to the hangar for repairs. The dress rehearsal was repeated at the pad in June, with improved results.

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