What to know when flying drones for the Northern Lights: high KP index geomagnetic storms can disable GPS and cause flyaways, making night strobe compliance, manual flight skills, and flyaway recovery essential for safe aurora drone filming.
Every time a major geomagnetic storm hits, social media fills with jaw-dropping footage of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis)—and inevitably, drone pilots start asking the same question:
Can I fly my drone to capture this?
The short answer is yes—but only if you understand the risks.
The long answer is what this article is about.
Flying during geomagnetic storms is not normal drone flying, and if you rely entirely on GPS without understanding manual flight or flyaway recovery, you may be putting your aircraft (and others) at serious risk.
Night Flying Is Legal — But It Has Rules
In the U.S., flying at night is allowed under Federal Aviation Administration regulations, but it comes with specific requirements.
Night Flight Requirements
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Your drone must have a strobe visible for at least 3 statute miles
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The strobe must have a flash rate sufficient for collision avoidance
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You are still responsible for:
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Visual line of sight
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Yielding to crewed aircraft
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Operating safely for the environment and conditions
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Night flying alone is manageable.
Night flying during a solar storm is a completely different animal.
The Real Danger: Geomagnetic Storms & the KP Index
The same solar activity that creates beautiful auroras also disrupts the systems your drone depends on.
What Is the KP Index?
The KP index measures the intensity of geomagnetic interference caused by:
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Solar flares
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Coronal mass ejections
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Charged particles interacting with Earth’s magnetic field
The higher the KP index:
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The more intense the aurora
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The worse your GPS performance becomes
At elevated KP levels, GPS positioning can become unreliable, delayed, or completely incorrect. It will cause a flyaway.
Why GPS Fails During Aurora Flights
Most consumer and prosumer drones rely on:
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GPS for position hold
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GPS for braking
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GPS for Return-to-Home logic
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GPS for wind compensation
During geomagnetic storms:
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Your drone may think it’s drifting when it’s not
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Or worse—it may not recognize real drift at all
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Position hold can fail
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RTH may initiate in the wrong direction
This is where flyaways happen.
The Uncomfortable Truth: You Will Likely Experience a Flyaway
If you attempt to fly during a strong geomagnetic storm while relying on GPS, you should assume this:
You are likely to experience a flyaway.
That doesn’t mean you will lose the drone—but it does mean you must be prepared to stop one immediately.
Enterprise vs Consumer Drones: A Huge Difference
Enterprise / Advanced Platforms
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Pilot manually controls drift
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GPS loss is inconvenient, not catastrophic
Consumer GPS-Dependent Drones
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Depend on satellite positioning to remain stable
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Can suddenly accelerate, drift, or ignore stick input
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Pilots often panic when GPS assistance disappears
If you’ve never flown without GPS, aurora conditions are the worst place to learn.
Do You Know How to Stop a Flyaway?
This is the real dividing line between pilots.
Stopping a flyaway involves:
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Understanding wind vs perceived drift
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Knowing when to disable GPS assistance
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Controlling the aircraft purely by attitude and orientation
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Avoiding over-correction and panic inputs
This is something we explicitly teach in:
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Flight Mastery
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Operations & Emergency Procedures training
And it leads to a hard but necessary question:
If you don’t know how to stop a flyaway, should you even be flying?
Why Aurora Flights Are So Tempting—and So Risky
Northern Lights flights are tempting because:
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The footage is rare
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The visuals are incredible
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The moment feels fleeting
But these flights combine:
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Night operations
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Cold weather
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Wind at altitude
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Severe GPS interference
That’s a high-risk stack of variables—even for experienced pilots.
Safer Alternatives to Consider
If you still want to capture the aurora:
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Use ground-based long-exposure photography
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Fly before or after peak KP activity
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Fly lower and closer, where visual reference is stronger
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Only fly platforms you can control without GPS
Final Takeaway
Flying drones during geomagnetic storms to film the Northern Lights is not a beginner activity.
Yes, it’s legal—with the right lighting.
Yes, it’s technically possible.
But it demands:
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Advanced situational awareness
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Manual flight skills
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Flyaway recovery knowledge
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A deep respect for how solar activity affects navigation systems
Auroras are beautiful.
Flyaways are not.
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