Model Predicted the Flares. They Erupted.

Artemis II is supposed to carry four astronauts around the Moon in March. A peer-reviewed solar physics paper published the same month says that's the wrong month.

Victor M. Velasco Herrera and colleagues at the Instituto de Geofísica, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), including co-author Willie Soon of the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES) — a research organization that has received funding from the fossil fuel industry — published a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics on February 13, 2026 that used 50 years of GOES satellite data to identify two overlapping solar cycles — a 1.7-year harmonic and a 7-year harmonic — that create periodic superflare risk windows. Their model predicted that mid-2025 through mid-2026 would be one of those windows, with elevated activity focused on the Sun's southern hemisphere between 5°S and 25°S latitude. In early February 2026, six solar flares erupted in that exact region. The model held.

"We found a rhythmic pattern in solar activity based on two natural cycles," the UNAM team wrote in Phys.org. "When these cycles line up in certain ways, the risk of superflares increases significantly." Their recommendation: delay Artemis II until the end of 2026.

The current March 2026 target is already a postponement — pushed back after a hydrogen leak during wet dress rehearsal — as The Guardian reported. The agency has not publicly adopted Herrera's solar cycle framing. NASA's position, as outlined in a briefing on Artemis II crew radiation protection, is that the mission's radiation exposure will be "comparable to a one-month stay on the International Space Station, or about 5 percent of an astronaut career limit," according to NASA. The agency plans real-time monitoring, including use of the Perseverance rover on Mars to observe far-side sunspots weeks in advance.

That position is technically coherent. It's also incomplete in a way that matters.

The Orion spacecraft that will carry the Artemis II crew has a documented radiation problem. During the uncrewed Artemis I flight, Orion experienced 24 power distribution anomalies in its electrical system that engineers traced to radiation, according to the NASA Office of Inspector General. NASA has described operational workarounds and software changes to address this for Artemis II — a hardware fix is not in the plan.

The Orion heat shield, meanwhile, presented a separate issue. During Artemis I reentry, material broke off unevenly during return, causing heat to build up in the outer layer, which trapped gases, raised internal pressure, and produced cracking and irregular shedding. The NASA OIG separately documented this as one of several Orion hardware issues requiring continued investigation. These are two distinct problem areas with different root causes — NASA has been investigating both. They are not resolved.

A solar superflare during Artemis II is a low-probability event. But the consequences are asymmetric in a way that should concentrate the mind: a coronal mass ejection directed at a crewed vehicle transiting the space radiation environment is not a scenario where "we'll monitor it in real time" is a complete answer. Real-time observation tells you what's already happening. A large CME takes hours to days to arrive. Perseverance's Mastcam-Z cameras can see the far side, which helps. It does not eliminate tail risk.

The UNAM paper is not a lone voice. The Sun is in an active phase of Solar Cycle 25, and multiple space weather monitoring teams have noted elevated activity. Herrera's model is distinctive in its specificity — the 1.7-year and 7-year harmonics — rather than in its general direction. What makes it notable is that the specific danger window it predicted before the February flares erupted is the same window NASA has chosen for a crewed lunar flyby.

Artemis II is a test flight. Its development costs — the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft together consumed nearly $24 billion from inception through the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022, and the broader Artemis program was projected to cost $93 billion through fiscal year 2025 — are not abstract budget line items. They're the reason NASA describes Artemis II as a confidence-building step before a lunar surface mission. The confidence being built depends on hardware that worked once, in a radiation environment, under conditions that did not include a superflare.

Pushing to late 2026 is not cost-free. Every additional month of delay carries schedule risk, budget pressure, and political exposure. But the difference between March and October is not trivial: Herrera's model places the current high-risk window closing around mid-2026. Late 2026 puts the mission on the other side of it.

NASA's real-time monitoring capability is genuinely impressive — Perseverance on Mars is an unusual and underreported asset for solar observation. That capability should be part of any launch decision framework. It does not replace one.

The uncomfortable arithmetic: Orion had 24 power anomalies on an uncrewed flight. Herrera's paper says the superflare risk window is real and current. NASA's chosen launch date falls inside it. The hardware investigations are ongoing. These four facts, placed together, do not add up to a sure cancellation. They add up to a question worth asking on the record, with the sources cited, so that the record reflects what was known and when.

Per Phys.org, Herrera recommends late 2026. NASA has not adopted that recommendation. The March 2026 launch remains on the schedule — pending, as The Guardian reported, on completion of hardware reviews including the heat shield.

The Artemis II crew — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will make the 685,000-mile round trip on a schedule that, according to one peer-reviewed model, places them inside a documented solar superflare risk window. Whether that's acceptable is ultimately NASA's call. The question is whether that call was made with the model in front of the decision-makers, not whether the model exists.