A joint European-Chinese spacecraft is set to blast off Tuesday to investigate what happens when extreme winds and giant explosions of plasma shot out from the sun slam into Earth's magnetic shield.

A small asteroid roughly the size of a house slipped past Earth on the night of May 18, 2026, passing closer than the Moon and threading through a region of space occupied by some of the satellites that keep GPS systems and communications networks running.

Earth’s surface is warming, but the upper atmosphere has been cooling for decades, and scientists now understand why.

Researchers expected to find "a gradual increase in artificial light at night," but instead saw "much more nuanced patterns," NASA said.