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WASHINGTON: The United States launched three spacecraft on Wednesday in an effort to better monitor space weather such as solar storms, which can interfere with technology and power systems on Earth.
The three probes blasted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, built by the private company SpaceX.
Once in space, the probes will begin a long journey to reach the Lagrange 1 point – a spot approximately 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from the Sun that offers a stable vantage point for observation.
The “Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe” (IMAP) will use its instruments to study the Sun’s high-energy particles and the protective magnetic bubble surrounding our solar system known as the heliosphere, data that can offer insight into space weather and cosmic radiation.
Solar storms are high-radiation events caused by flares on the Sun’s surface, and are very difficult to predict.
They can impact activities on Earth, including aviation, mobile communications and power grids – and potentially endanger astronauts and satellites in space.
The Space Weather Follow-on (SWFO-L1) spacecraft, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), aims to detect the weather patterns in advance.
“It can’t stop an incoming threat, but it can give us time to prepare,” said Irene Parker of NOAA.
With notice, authorities could shelter astronauts, warn aircraft pilots of forthcoming disruptions of GPS systems and adapt power grids in anticipation.
And the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, the third passenger on the rocket, will study the Earth’s exosphere in a bid to better understand how space weather affects it.

Artificial intelligence is joining the list of big and complex global challenges that world leaders and diplomats will tackle at this week’s annual high-level United Nations meetup.
Since the AI boom kicked off with ChatGPT’s debut about three years ago, the technology’s breathtaking capabilities have amazed the world. Tech companies have raced to develop better AI systems even as experts warn of its risks, including existential threats like engineered pandemics, large-scale misinformation or rogue AIs running out of control, and call for safeguards.
The UN’s adoption of a new governance architecture is the latest and biggest effort to rein in AI. Previous multilateral efforts, including three AI summits organized by Britain, South Korea and France, have resulted only in non-binding pledges.
Last month, the General Assembly adopted a resolution to set up two key bodies on AI — a global forum and an independent scientific panel of experts — in a milestone move to shepherd global governance efforts for the technology.
On Wednesday, a UN Security Council meeting will convene an open debate on the issue. Among the questions to be addressed: How can the Council help ensure the responsible application of AI to comply with international law and support peace processes and conflict prevention?
And on Thursday, as part of the body’s annual meeting, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will hold a meeting to launch the forum, called the Global Dialogue on AI Governance.
It’s a venue for governments and “stakeholders” to discuss international cooperation and share ideas and solutions. It’s scheduled to meet formally in Geneva next year and in New York in 2027.
Meanwhile, recruitment is expected to get underway to find 40 experts for the scientific panel, including two co-chairs, one from a developed country and one from a developing nation. The panel has drawn comparisons with the UN’s climate change panel and its flagship annual COP meeting.
The new bodies represent “a symbolic triumph.” They are “by far the world’s most globally inclusive approach to governing AI,” Isabella Wilkinson, a research fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House, wrote in a blog post.
“But in practice, the new mechanisms look like they will be mostly powerless,” she added. Among the possible issues is whether the UN’s lumbering administration is able to regulate a fast-moving technology like AI.
Ahead of the meeting, a group of influential experts called for governments to agree on so-called red lines for AI to take effect by the end of next year, saying that the technology needs “minimum guardrails” designed to prevent the “most urgent and unacceptable risks.”
The group, including senior employees at ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Google’s AI research lab DeepMind and chatbot maker Anthropic, wants governments to sign an internationally binding agreement on AI. They point out that the world has previously agreed on treaties banning nuclear testing and biological weapons and protecting the high seas.
“The idea is very simple,” said one of the backers, Stuart Russell, a computer science professor and director of University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Human Compatible AI. “As we do with medicines and nuclear power stations, we can require developers to prove safety as a condition of market access.”
Russell suggested that UN governance could resemble the workings of another UN-affiliated body, the International Civil Aviation Organization, which coordinates with safety regulators across different countries and makes sure they’re all working off the same page.
And rather than laying out a set of rules that are set in stone, diplomats could draw up a “framework convention” that’s flexible enough to be updated to reflect AI’s latest advances, he said.