NOAA’s space weather forecasting toolbox is about to get a major upgrade this year with the launch of a spacecraft dedicated to helping forecast impacts from the Sun , which is no easy task to begin with.

"You're trying to forecast something from 93 million miles away, how impactful that would be when you have just a couple of satellites in between that whole vacuum of space," NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) Service Coordinator Shawn Dahl said.

Space weather forecasters have received some help in the past few years. Most recently, NASA’s TRACERS mission launched in July to study Earth’s magnetic field, which can help forecasters understand the impacts of space weather.

NOAA’s GOES satellites have space weather monitoring instruments. Its newest satellite, GOES-19, now GOES E

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