Space · Sunday, 11 October 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Three clouds of charged gas from the Sun put the northern lights over southern England, and the Met Office says they may return until Tuesday

One group of sunspots threw three clouds of charged gas at Earth in three days. The northern lights reached Devon, Hampshire and Kent on Friday and Saturday, and nobody could say in advance how far south they would get.

clouds of charged gas thrown toward Earth by one sunspot group in three days

They left the Sun on 6, 7 and 8 October. [2]

1m mph

speed of the solar wind, the steady stream of particles the Sun gives off

Earth's magnetic field funnels the particles toward the poles. [1]

6 vs 3

days of strong magnetic activity in an average March, against December

A 75-year study found March has the most such days, with October close behind. [4]

The lead story — what happened

The northern lights lit up skies across the UK on Friday and Saturday evenings. [1]
People saw them as far south as Devon, Hampshire and Kent, though they are mostly seen near the Arctic Circle and in northern Scotland. [1]
The lights came from three coronal mass ejections, huge clouds of charged gas and magnetic field thrown off by the Sun. [2]
All three came from one group of sunspots, called AR4549, which faces Earth. Two left the Sun on 6 and 7 October, and a third on 8 October. [2]
The first came with a solar flare, a sudden burst of energy from the Sun, early on 6 October. [3]
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, the US government office that forecasts solar storms, expected a moderate storm on 9 October. [2]
In past storms of that strength the lights have been seen as far south as New York and Idaho in the US. [2]
Forecasters could not say in advance how far south the lights would reach. That depends on the magnetic direction each cloud carries when it meets Earth's magnetic field. [2][3]
The arrival times were also uncertain by several hours, because the clouds were travelling close behind each other through the Sun's steady stream of particles. [2]
The lights appear when charged particles from the Sun are steered toward the poles by Earth's magnetic field and make the gases high in the air glow. [4]
Oxygen glows green, and higher up a rare red. Nitrogen gives blue and purple. [1]
The Met Office, the UK's weather service, said the lights could be seen in clear skies until Tuesday. AR4549 still faces Earth and may erupt again. [1][2]

6-8 OctClouds leave the Sun

9-10 OctLights over Kent

The three clouds took about three days to cross from the Sun to Earth.

Who is involved

The Met Office

the UK's national weather service; it said the lights could return in clear skies until Tuesday
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center

the US government office that forecasts solar storms; it expected a moderate storm on 9 October
AR4549

a group of sunspots on the side of the Sun facing Earth; it threw out all three clouds

How it unfolded

6 Oct A solar flare from AR4549 throws the first cloud toward Earth [3]
7 Oct A second cloud leaves the same sunspot group [2]
8 Oct A third cloud erupts, due to arrive around 10 or 11 October [2]
9 Oct NOAA expects a moderate storm as the first clouds arrive [2]
Fri and Sat The lights are seen across the UK as far south as Kent [1]
Until Tue The Met Office says sightings may go on in clear skies [1]

Where this points

Watch whether the third cloud and a stream of fast solar wind expected around 11 October keep the lights in southern skies into the week, as the Met Office allows until Tuesday. [1][3]

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

A busy Sun High↑

One sunspot group facing Earth threw three clouds of charged gas at it between 6 and 8 October. [2] A balloon telescope 35 km up found the Sun's calm surface full of twisted magnetic threads, the kind linked to solar flares. [10]

A crowded orbit Building↑

A Soviet weather satellite launched in 1981 broke into tens of pieces at the most crowded height in orbit. [5] Each Starlink satellite already moves out of the way of debris or other craft more than 40 times a year. [5] Two Vulcan rockets stand upright, waiting to carry more of Amazon's internet satellites. [11]

Answers that take years Steady→

A flash of X-rays caught in July 2025 has only now been traced to two crashing neutron stars. [8] Results from a balloon telescope flown in 2024 are now out in three papers. [10] Japan's samples from Mars's moon Phobos are not due back until 2031. [9]

The rest of the day

7 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
A dead Soviet satellite breaks apart again

LeoLabs, a company that tracks objects in orbit with radar, saw Meteor 2-7 break into an estimated tens of pieces as it passed over its site in Western Australia. [5] Meteor 2-7 was a Soviet weather satellite launched in 1981, and it had already broken apart once, in March 2004. [5] It flies about 855 km up, where debris is most crowded, the debris expert Jim Shell said. [5] LeoLabs called it the latest of several breakups in six months, including the US spy satellite USA 32 in September. [5]

200516,000
202644,000
Pieces of debris in orbit tracked by the European Space Agency.

Why it matters — Every new piece is something working satellites must dodge, and the European Space Agency now tracks more than 44,000 pieces of debris, against about 16,000 in 2005. [5] In February a piece of debris damaged the return capsule of three Chinese astronauts on the Tiangong space station. [5]
03
A cargo ship leaves the station to burn up

Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo ship, named the S.S. Steven R. Nagel, was scheduled to be let go from the International Space Station by the station's robot arm on 9 October. [6] It had arrived in April on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying 4,990 kg of science gear and supplies. [6] It is packed with thousands of pounds of rubbish and is due to burn up with it as it falls into the air on Sunday. [6] It was the 24th Cygnus to bring cargo to the station. [6]

Why it matters — Three of the four robot cargo ships serving the station are burned up like this after one trip. [6] Only SpaceX's Dragon capsule comes back down whole, by parachute into the sea, to be used again. [6]
04
Musk given the top US science medal

US President Donald Trump gave Elon Musk, who runs the rocket company SpaceX, the National Medal of Science at a ceremony on 8 October. [7] It is the highest honour the US gives a scientist or engineer, and 529 people had received it before. [7] Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Lisa Su of the chip maker AMD received it too. [7] Musk was cited for engineering in space exploration, 'intelligence systems' and communications. [7]

Why it matters — The medal came about a week after the US defence department named Musk a co-leader of Project Meridian, a four-month study on preparing for future wars. [7] SpaceX's founder is now honoured by the US president while also helping to shape US military planning. [7]
05
A ten-minute X-ray flash from crashing dead stars

Astronomers say a flash of X-rays that lasted 10 minutes probably came from two neutron stars crashing together. [8] A neutron star is the tiny, very heavy core left when a giant star explodes. [8] The Einstein Probe, a European-Chinese X-ray telescope, caught the flash on 4 July 2025, after half a second of gamma rays. [8] Its light took 6 billion years to reach Earth, and the study is in the journal Science Bulletin. [8]

under 2 sUsual gamma flash
10 minThis X-ray glow
Flashes from crashing neutron stars usually fade within two seconds. This one kept glowing in X-rays for ten minutes.

Why it matters — Crashes like this make heavy elements such as gold, silver and platinum. [8] The team thinks one of the stars was a magnetar, a neutron star with a huge magnetic field. [8] Crashes like this may explain some of the hundreds of X-ray flashes the Einstein Probe has seen since 2024 that nobody has explained. [8]
06
Japan's Phobos mission is days from launch

Japan's space agency JAXA plans to launch its Martian Moons eXploration mission, MMX, from Tanegashima island on 20 October. [9] The $350 million spacecraft is to land twice on Phobos, the larger of Mars's two small moons, and bring samples back in 2031. [9] Scientists are split on whether Phobos is a captured asteroid or rubble thrown up when something huge hit Mars. [9] About 1% of what it scoops may be dust knocked off Mars itself, says mission science lead Kiyoshi Kuramoto. [9]

20 Oct 2026Launch from Japan
2031Phobos samples on Earth
The whole trip, with two landings on Phobos in the middle, takes about five years.

Why it matters — NASA effectively cancelled its own $11 billion plan to bring back rocks from Mars early this year. [9] That leaves MMX as a cheaper way to bring at least some Mars material to Earth, though three Russian attempts to reach Phobos all failed. [9]
07
A balloon telescope maps the Sun's calm side

Three papers in the Astrophysical Journal Letters report results from SUNRISE III, a 1-metre solar telescope hung under a helium balloon about 35 km up in 2024. [10] Flying above most of the air removes the blur that hides the Sun's finest magnetic details. [10] It found the calm parts of the Sun's lower atmosphere full of narrow magnetic threads about 725 km wide. [10] A computer model matched some of them to twisted ropes of magnetic field. [10]

Why it matters — Twisted magnetic ropes like these are what seem to set up solar flares when they snap and reconnect. [10] A flare of that kind launched the first of the clouds behind this weekend's northern lights. [3]
08
Vulcan rocket gets a return date

The Vulcan rocket of United Launch Alliance, a US rocket company, is now due to fly again no earlier than 29 October, Ars Technica reports. [11] The flight will carry satellites for Amazon Leo, Amazon's space internet network, and another Amazon flight on Vulcan is planned this year. [11] Amazon's Rajeev Badyal said two Vulcans are already standing upright in two assembly buildings. [11]

Why it matters — Badyal said getting rockets has been one of Amazon's main problems, which is why it signed deals with four launch companies. [11] Ars says Vulcan could fly far more often next year, if its solid rocket boosters work. [11]

02 Lesson why it matters

Why nobody can say how strong the northern lights will be until the storm arrives

Forecasters see a cloud of charged gas leave the Sun days ahead, but its strength here depends on its magnetic direction, which is only known when it arrives.

The twist

Forecasters can watch a solar storm leave the Sun days before it gets here. How strong it will be depends on which way its magnetic field points, and that is only known when it reaches Earth.

The picture

6-8 OctClouds seen leaving

9-10 OctStrength known

The clouds were seen leaving the Sun days ahead. How bright the lights would be was only clear when the clouds arrived.

How it works

A cloud of charged gas leaves the Sun
Telescopes see it go and work out a rough path and speed
Forecasters cannot tell its magnetic direction in advance
That direction decides how much energy gets into Earth's magnetic field
So how strong the lights will be is known only when the cloud arrives

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

The Soviet satellite breaking apart

LeoLabs saw that Meteor 2-7 had broken only when the wreck passed over its radar in Western Australia, and even then the count of pieces was an estimate.
Japan's Phobos mission

Pictures and readings taken from a distance left scientists split on what Phobos is made of, so Japan is sending a craft to scoop some up and bring it home.
The balloon telescope

The Sun's finest magnetic threads could not be read through the blur of the air, so the telescope was lifted 35 km up to measure them.

Where you've seen this

Hurricanes

the path is forecast days ahead, but the strength at landfall is often clear only in the last hours

A new medicine

lab tests suggest it works, but only giving it to patients shows how well

A new job

a CV says what someone has done, but how they work shows only once they start

The catch

Some things can be measured far ahead, like which sunspots face Earth and how fast a cloud is moving, so forecasts still pick out the nights worth watching.

And the whole of it

Skywatchers in Kent, forecasters at the Met Office and NOAA, and the Japanese team who will open Phobos samples in 2031 all have to wait for the thing itself to reach them. Anyone who looked up this weekend was waiting on the same clouds as the forecasters.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

Three clouds of charged gas from one sunspot group, AR4549, gave the UK its northern lights on Friday and Saturday, and forecasters could only give a range for how far south they would reach. [1][2] Out of sight, a 1981 Soviet weather satellite broke apart for a second time at the height where debris is already most crowded, the latest of several breakups in six months. [5]

Who gains

LeoLabs — Each breakup it spots backs its call for 'persistent sensing', the radar tracking of orbit that it sells. [5]
Elon Musk — He received the top US science medal about a week after the defence department made him a co-leader of a study on preparing for future wars. [7]
Japan's space agency JAXA — With NASA's own $11 billion plan to return Mars rocks effectively cancelled, MMX may bring back Mars dust as a cheaper side route. [9]
Skywatchers in southern England — Clear skies on Friday and Saturday showed them lights that are mostly seen near the Arctic Circle. [1]

Who pays

Companies flying satellites in low orbit — Every new fragment is one more thing to steer around, and each Starlink satellite already does that more than 40 times a year. [5]
Astronauts — In February debris damaged the return capsule of three Chinese astronauts on the Tiangong station, leaving them without a way home for 10 days. [5]
Scientists who chose Perseverance's Mars samples — The rover has been collecting rocks since 2021, and NASA's plan to bring them home ran into money and technical trouble and was effectively cancelled. [9]
Amazon Leo's future customers — Amazon's space internet waits on rockets, and its vice president said getting launches has been one of its main problems. [11]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

How far south the lights will reach before Tuesday.

It depends on each cloud's magnetic direction when it meets Earth's magnetic field, and arrival times were forecast only to within several hours. [1][2]
02

Whether the Sun is past its busiest years.

The Guardian reports experts saying last year that 2026 would be a peak year for the lights. [1] Space.com says the Sun has already passed the peak of its 11-year cycle, though strong storms still come. [4]
03

What broke Meteor 2-7 apart.

LeoLabs saw the pieces on its radar but gave no cause, and its count of tens of fragments is an estimate. [5]
04

Why so many old objects in orbit are breaking up now.

LeoLabs calls six months of breakups, including the US spy satellite USA 32 and a Chinese rocket body, a worrying trend, but names no single reason. [5]
05

Where Phobos came from.

Scientists are split between a captured asteroid and rubble from a giant crash on Mars, and the mission's science lead Kiyoshi Kuramoto still calls it 50-50. [9]
06

Whether the X-ray flash really came from a magnetar.

The team thinks at least one of the crashing stars was a magnetar, but that rests on one event, EP250704a. [8]
07

Whether Vulcan flies on 29 October.

Ars gives that date as no earlier than, and says Vulcan's busy next year depends on its solid rocket boosters working. [11]

04 Hope carry this

On Friday and Saturday evenings the northern lights were seen from Devon, Hampshire and Kent, far south of the Arctic Circle and northern Scotland where they mostly appear.

Also true today

A balloon carried a 1-metre telescope 35 km above the ground and gave scientists one of the clearest views yet of the magnetic threads on the Sun's calm surface.
Astronomers traced a 10-minute flash of X-rays to two dead stars crashing together, and light from the crash took 6 billion years to reach Earth.