The sun has a way of messing with us. While it feeds our entire existence, the sun also tends to threaten our modern life with its raging solar storms.
In 1859, a burst of plasma from the Sun’s corona, now known as the Carrington Event, shut down telegraph systems around the world. While some telegraph operators tried to send and receive messages, they received electric shocks. If such an event were to occur again today, it would seriously disrupt our power grid and interfere with the GPS systems that inform much of the modern movement.
Fortunately, scientists are working hard to better predict when these solar storms may occur. This week, NASA approved two new missions designed to understand what creates space weather, how the sun affects the solar system, and so effectively mess with our Earth technology.
The two new missions focus on the field of heliophysics, the study of the interaction between the sun and the solar system.
They have long names, but like many at NASA, each is associated with some kind of memorable acronym. There is the E.xtreme YOUltraviolet H.high-T.hroughput S.pectroscopic T.elescope E.psilon M.issue, or EUVST, and the E.electrojet WITHeeman Ito become E.xplorer, or EZIE.
Both missions are designed to help scientists understand the physics of solar wind. The more we know about it, the better we can predict flare-ups that could seriously disrupt life on Earth and astronauts in space.
Extreme ultraviolet spectroscopic telescope with high throughput Epsilon mission (EUVST)
The first mission is led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), with NASA contributing to the mission’s hardware.
EUVST is a solar telescope that will observe how the sun’s atmosphere gives off solar wind and causes solar eruptions.
Solar activity largely depends on the sun’s magnetic field. The sun’s magnetic field goes through a periodic cycle in which the south and north poles essentially switch places, and it takes about eleven years before they switch back again.
During its 11-year cycle, the sun periodically casts boiling hot plasma, in the form of solar flares and solar wind, across the solar system. These ejections can have an effect here on Earth, for example disrupt communication systems or disrupt electricity.
Solar activity can create magnetic storms in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, which can affect power grids, satellites, orbiting spacecraft and astronauts.
Beginning in 2026, EUVST will perform comprehensive UV spectroscopy measurements of the solar atmosphere at the highest level of detail yet, allowing scientists to find out how different magnetic and plasma processes are driving solar corona warming and solar energy. release, according to NASA.
The solar telescope will essentially observe the sun as if it were a distant star and analyze the spectrum of the sun’s extreme ultraviolet radiation to study the sun’s atmosphere in detail.
To achieve this, EUVST has been developed with higher sensitivity and resolution than any other spectrometer.
- Launch date: 2026
- Cost: $ 55 million
- Mission Life: 2 years
- Date first proposed: January 2018
- Main goal: to understand how solar wind is generated
Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE)
Meanwhile, the second approved mission will study electrical currents in Earth’s atmosphere connecting auroras to Earth’s magnetosphere, or the region of space that surrounds our planet.
Launched in June 2024, the Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) consists of three CubeSats, a miniature cube-shaped satellite that will observe the electric current orbiting through the Earth’s atmosphere around 60-90 miles above the surface , extends into the planet’s magnetosphere.
By doing this, scientists hope to witness the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere, the same process by which stunning auroras are created in our skies. While they provide a beautiful view of our sky, aurora can also interfere with communication and radio signals, as well as in orbit around spacecraft.
The mission will use the Auroral Electrojet Index, a global index that measures magnetic activity in the auroral zones, as well as measurements of ultraviolet light to study solar activity.
The EZIE mission is led by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
- Launch date: June 2024
- Cost: $ 53.3 million
- Mission life: 2 years
- Date first proposed: 2018
The combination of the two missions will lead to a new understanding of our Sun, as well as the physics behind our host star’s activity and how it affects us here on Earth.
“With these new missions, we are expanding the way we study the sun, space and Earth as an interconnected system,” Peg Luce, deputy director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA headquarters in Washington said in a statement.
As scientists closely observe the intricate processes that drive solar weather, they hope to protect Earth from the sun’s occasional raging storms so that our satellite systems remain intact and we don’t lose connection as we try to navigate our way through Google Maps or worse . , receive electric shocks while trying to operate our version of the telegraph system.