Here’s the space weather forecast for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope launch

Strong winds and rain at the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, were responsible for the latest delay of the James Webb Space Telescope launch. But there is also another type of weather that might interfere with the grand telescope’s journey to orbit: space weather. So what does the space weather forecast look like for the upcoming big day of international astronomy?

NASA experts are keeping a close eye on three aspects of space weather to greenlight James Webb Space Telescope‘s launch: the global index of geomagnetic activity (also known as the Kp index), the state of the Van Allen Belts (the two regions around Earth where high-energy particles get trapped by the planet’s magnetic field), and solar energetic particles that sometimes escape from the sun.