The aurora borealis phenomenon is one of the most exciting sights on Earth, but astronomers are interested in the science behind it and its unique phenomena. In this regard, NASA has now revealed plans to launch two rockets, to study how our planet exchanges energy with the space around it. The aurora borealis, also known as the aurora borealis, occurs at the boundary between the neutral atmosphere that blankets our planet and the electrically reactive material known as the plasma that makes up space.
NASA’s probe captures magical views of the Martian sky | Video
And occasionally, when electrically charged particles from space pour into our atmosphere, they collide with neutral particles and ignite them, resulting in the beautiful dancing waves and amazing colors of light we see in the sky. This is the layer that NASA hopes to study in the upcoming INCAA (Neutral Ion Coupling During Active Aurora) mission. Since the inhabitants of the planet Earth are residents of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere on Earth, we are used to air made of neutral particles, and NASA explains that the oxygen and nitrogen we breathe are magnetically balanced atoms and molecules with all their electrons accounted for.
But hundreds of miles above us, our air begins to drastically change its character, electrons are energized by unfiltered sunlight, and electrons are stripped from their atoms, which then take on a positive charge. The once-neutral gas turns into an electrically reactive state of a substance known as plasma, and there is no hard cut where the neutral gas ends and plasma begins; In addition, there is an extended boundary layer where the two types of particles are mixed.
Daily winds and magnetic disturbances cause the particles to fly in different directions, sometimes causing them to collide and release energy. “Friction is a great analogy,” said Stephen Kepler, associate professor of physics and astronomy at Clemson University in South Carolina and principal investigator on the INCAA mission. Now instead.”
“When you add the aurora borealis to the mix, the amount of friction goes up a little bit,” Kepler said. “It’s like storming a football field following a college game…the people at the top of the field run toward the field, and the closer you get to the field, The crowd gets larger and denser, which is the case for electrons experiencing the increasing neutral density of the upper atmosphere.”
The INCAA mission will include sending two small rockets to the edge of space while the aurora borealis are in the sky. “Sounding” rockets, as they are called, are small launch vehicles designed to ascend into space for a few minutes of measurements before falling back to Earth, making them ideally suited to studying short, transient phenomena such as the aurora borealis. Tracking steam”—colored chemicals similar to those used in fireworks displays—before it reached its peak altitude of regarding 186 miles.
Steam trackers create visible clouds that researchers can see from the ground, tracking winds in the neutral atmosphere, like dropping food dye into a basin filled with water to see how the water moves. A second rocket will launch shortly following, reaching an altitude of regarding 125 miles to measure the temperature and density of plasma in and around the aurora borealis. Kaeppler hopes this data will shed light on how the aurora borealis alters the boundary layer where electrified air meets neutral—whether pushing it away toward the ground, lifting it upward, or causing it to bend on itself. “All of these factors make this an interesting physical problem that needs to be investigated,” Kepler said.
You may also be interested in:
