How can I see the northern lights? To see the northern lights, you need to be in the right place at the right time. Auroras are the result of charged particles and magnetism from the Sun called space weather dancing with the Earth’s magnetic field. And they happen far above the clouds. So you need […]
Category: Heliophysics
How Can I See the Northern Lights? We Asked a NASA Expert: Episode 54
How can I see the northern lights? To see the northern lights, you need to be in the right place at the right time. Auroras are the result of charged particles and magnetism from the Sun called space weather dancing with the Earth’s magnetic field. And they happen far above the clouds. So you need […]
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Team Wins 2024 Collier Trophy
The innovative team of engineers and scientists from NASA, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and more than 40 other partner organizations across the country that created the Parker Solar Probe mission has been awarded the 2024 Robert J. Collier Trophy by the National Aeronautic Association (NAA). This annual award recognizes the […]
NASA to Launch Three Rockets from Alaska in Single Aurora Experiment
Three NASA-funded rockets are set to launch from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, in an experiment that seeks to reveal how auroral substorms affect the behavior and composition of Earth’s far upper atmosphere. The experiment’s outcome could upend a long-held theory about the aurora’s interaction with the thermosphere. It may also improve space […]
NASA’s EZIE Launches on Mission to Study Earth’s Electrojets
Under the nighttime California sky, NASA’s EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) mission launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 11:43 p.m. PDT on March 14. Taking off from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara, the EZIE mission’s trio of small satellites will fly in a pearls-on-a-string configuration approximately 260 to 370 miles above Earth’s surface to […]
NASA Atmospheric Wave-Studying Mission Releases Data from First 3,000 Orbits
Following the 3,000th orbit of NASA’s AWE (Atmospheric Waves Experiment) aboard the International Space Station, researchers publicly released the mission’s first trove of scientific data, crucial to investigate how and why subtle changes in Earth’s atmosphere cause disturbances, as well as how these atmospheric disturbances impact technological systems on the ground and in space. “We’ve […]
NASA’s Record-Shattering, Theory-Breaking MMS Mission Turns 10
Since its launch on March 12, 2015, NASA’s MMS, or Magnetospheric Multiscale, mission has been rewriting our understanding of a key physical process that is important across the universe, from black holes to the Sun to Earth’s protective magnetic field. This process, called magnetic reconnection, occurs when magnetic field lines tangle and explosively realign, flinging […]
NASA Launches Missions to Study Sun, Universe’s Beginning
NASA’s newest astrophysics observatory, SPHEREx, is on its way to study the origins of our universe and the history of galaxies, and to search for the ingredients of life in our galaxy. Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx lifted off at 8:10 p.m. PDT on […]
Cosmic Mapmaker: NASA’s SPHEREx Space Telescope Ready to Launch
NASA’s latest space observatory is targeting a March 8 liftoff, and the agency’s PUNCH heliophysics mission is sharing a ride. Here’s what to expect during launch and beyond. In a little over a day, NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope is slated to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. […]