Once there was…
A Sun that usually feels steady from down here on Earth—bright, reliable, almost routine. But in spring 2024, scientists began watching something far from routine: a solar active region that would become one of the most intense in two decades.
Every day,
Researchers at ETH Zurich followed the Sun with two powerful “eyes” in space: ESA’s Solar Orbiter and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
Day after day, those spacecraft tracked solar active region NOAA 13664 for an extraordinary 94 days, from April to July 2024, across three solar rotations—building what became the longest continuous image series of a single active region, a milestone for solar physics.
Until one day,
On April 16, 2024, NOAA 13664 emerged on the Sun’s far side—out of Earth’s direct view. Instead of fading like so many regions do, it grew more complex, weaving itself into a tightly intertwined magnetic structure as it rotated in and out of view.
And then the Sun did what it does when magnetic fields tangle too tightly: it snapped.
On May 20, 2024, the region unleashed the most powerful solar flare in 20 years.
Because of that,
The flare activity and eruptions from NOAA 13664 helped trigger the strongest geomagnetic storms since 2003. The effects weren’t just abstract charts and satellite readouts—they were visible and tangible:
- Auroras appeared far south, even as far as Switzerland.
- Railways, satellites, digital agriculture, and power systems faced disruptions.
- Farmers experienced economic losses when drone operations and sensor signals were interrupted—an unusually direct reminder that space weather can reach all the way into modern fieldwork and food systems.
Because of that,
Solar Orbiter’s unique orbit mattered as much as the storm itself: it allowed scientists to see parts of the Sun hidden from Earth, making it possible to track the region nearly continuously and understand how it built up into a superstorm-producing magnetic labyrinth.
Those 94 days of observations—reported by ScienceDaily (January 13, 2026) and published in Astronomy (2025), DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202556136—aren’t just a record of what happened. They are a blueprint for what to watch for next time.
Ever since then,
The story of NOAA 13664 has become a case study in why better space weather forecasting is urgent: to protect satellites, electrical grids, and the increasingly digital systems societies depend on—from precision agriculture to transportation.
And more help is on the way: ESA’s upcoming Vigil mission (planned launch: 2031) is designed to improve prediction capability, so that future superstorms don’t arrive as surprises, but as threats we can prepare for.
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