The primary bits of knowledge have come again from the trio of small satellites that make up NASA’s EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) mission, which goals to resolve some mysteries surrounding the “auroral electrojet” phenomena in our environment.
The “first mild” observations are promising, and NASA says the EZIE satellites are “poised to disclose essential particulars about Earth’s auroral electrojets.”
After launching March 14 from California’s Vandenberg House Drive Base on SpaceX’s Transporter 13 rideshare mission, EZIE’s three suitcase-sized cubesats now orbit just a few hundred miles above Earth in a string-of-pearls configuration.
“The EZIE crew could be very enthusiastic about these first-light outcomes,” Sam Yee of the Johns Hopkins Utilized Physics Laboratory, the mission’s principal investigator, stated in a press release. “The observations display that each the spacecraft and the MEM instrument onboard are working as anticipated.”
MEM, quick for Microwave Electrojet Magnetogram, measures a phenomenon referred to as Zeeman splitting. This technique will give NASA researchers perception into the construction and evolution of the electrojets system, which has by no means been accessible to scientists earlier than.
Auroral electrojets are intense currents created by the huge power transferred by the photo voltaic wind when it hits Earth’s higher environment. The electrojets push about 1 million amps {of electrical} cost round Earth’s magnetic poles each second.
Whereas they move some 65 miles (100 kilometers) above the bottom, auroral electrojets are liable for a few of Earth’s largest magnetic disturbances. They will additionally affect the security of astronauts and trigger satellite tv for pc interference.
Understanding these electrojets has been a precedence at NASA for some time, and the EZIE mission marks the primary time scientists could have the prospect to map them up shut. The mission is funded by the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington and is managed out of Goddard House Flight Heart in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Subsequent, the crew will run closing checkouts and calibrations for the three EZIE cubesats. If all the things goes nicely, NASA says the mission will begin formal science investigations in a month.
