Two new missions to explore the Sun and the auroras of the Earth could greatly improve our understanding of the complex responsible interactions potentially dangerous space time.
The auroras seen in the high northern and southern latitudes of our planet can be very beautiful, but the phenomena and processes responsible for these dramatic light shows are known to interfere with our communication signals and utility networks. Experts by that severe space time, in the form of powerful geomagnetic storms, it will make it much worse, eliminating handheld devices, satellite fleets and transformers responsible for transmitting electricity through electricity networks.
A geomagnetic storm of this scale has not affected the Earth from in the mid-nineteenth century, but scientists have reason to believe that we will experience a similar event at some point in the future. The problem is that we are not very good at predicting this kind of thing, either because of the daily spatial weather of everyday life or because of fear. type that happens once every 100 years.
This is where these two new heliophysical missions come in, as they will help us “better understand the Sun and Earth as an interconnected system”. seconds at NASA. To do so, the new satellites will investigate the physics behind such things as solar winds, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections, the latter of which are responsible for geomagnetic storms. Statistics from these missions will improve our prediction skills, giving us the potential to face stormy weather coming in.
G / O Media may receive a commission
For the EUVST mission, or Epsilon mission of the extreme ultraviolet high-performance spectroscopic telescope, a probe will analyze the spectrum of our star’s extreme ultraviolet radiation. It will study how the solar wind comes out of the atmosphere or corona of the Sun, how the stellar material propagates in space. Scientists will use this data to determine the ways in which these processes affect the solar system, including the Earth’s atmosphere.
This “state-of-the-art solar observation satellite“It will have the highest resolution and sensitivity of any previous UV spectrometer, according to the project website. These capabilities could unravel the different ways in which magnetic and plasma processes produce coronal warming and huge energy emissions.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will lead the EUVST mission while working with partners in the United States and Europe. NASA will contribute $ 55 million to the project, which will include a UV detector, parts for the spectrograph, a guide telescope, software and an imaging system to contextualize spectrographic measurements. Harry Warren, of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, will be the principal investigator. EUVUST is expected to launch in 2026.
The second mission, the Zeeman Imaging Explorer Electrojet, or EZIE, will involve three cubes in Earth orbit. EZIE, with a budget of $ 53.3 million, will study the electric currents in the Earth’s atmosphere associated with auroral activity and the magnetosphere of our planet. Satellites will investigate auroral electrojet—an electric current that reaches the magnetosphere and passes through the atmosphere at altitudes between 60 and 90 miles (97-145 km) –to determine how and why it changes over time.
Jeng-Hwa Yee of Johns Hopkins University will serve as principal investigator.
“Despite decades of research, we still do not understand the basic configuration of electric currents that are central to the interactions between Earth and surrounding space,” Yee said in a Johns Hopkins. statement. “This is a problem of universal importance, as it applies to any magnetized body like Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter, but it is also of practical importance, as these currents have a profound impact on our technologies in space and here on Earth. “
EZIE is expected to launch around June 2024.
“We are thrilled to add these new missions to the growing fleet of satellites studying our Sun-Earth system using an incredible range of unprecedented observation tools,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate science administrator at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.C., dit in a NASA statement.
It will be years before we see the results of these missions, but it is important that we do this space heliophysics, for both scientific and practical reasons.. Research in 2017 suggested that a strong enough geomagnetic storm could cost the United States more than $ 40 billion a day as a result of damaged technology and global shutdowns.