{"id":464519,"date":"2026-05-24T08:09:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T08:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/464519\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T08:09:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T08:09:21","slug":"may-23-1967-a-solar-flare-jams-missile-detectors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/464519\/","title":{"rendered":"May 23, 1967: A solar flare jams missile detectors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\tBack to Article List\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tToday in the history of astronomy, space weather forecasters narrowly avert nuclear war.\t\t\t<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"\"\/<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Sun is shown in hydrogen-alpha on May 23, 1967, the day it released a huge solar flare the jammed missile-detection systems. Credit: NSO\/AURA\/NSF\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

On May 23, 1967, a highly active sunspot<\/a> region, McMath Region 8818, produced a series of solar flares<\/a>. The events were massive, including a rare white-light flare and one of the largest solar radio bursts ever recorded \u2013 so large, in fact, that they jammed the U.S.\u2019s Ballistic Missile Early Warning System. The system was designed to detect Soviet weapons, and this unprecedented interference was interpreted as an incoming Soviet attack. Military leaders told nuclear-armed aircraft to be \u201cready to launch.\u201d However, the solar forecasting staff at the Air Weather Service at NORAD, including on-duty forecaster Captain Lee Snyder, acted quickly, providing real-time information that convinced commanders that space weather was to blame \u2013 not Soviets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Air Weather Service had originally provided terrestrial meteorology support for the military, but since Sputnik<\/a> in the 1950s had been transitioning to space weather monitoring. Its services grew through the 1960s, but the Solar Forecast Center had only been operating since 1965. The narrowly avoided nuclear war was a major catalyst for the rapid expansion of space weather support for the military throughout the rest of the \u201960s and the \u201970s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List Today in the history of astronomy, space weather forecasters narrowly avert nuclear war. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,82,18312],"class_list":["post-464519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-the-sun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}