NASA Will Launch Rockets To Explore, Study The Mysteries Of Earth's Auroras

One of NASA's next missions is to explore and study the mysteries of Earth's auroras. The space agency will achieve this by launching rockets into the Earth's upper atmosphere.

Aurora, known also as Northern Light or polar light, appears as a natural light in the sky. It is mostly seen in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. It is created when the magnetosphere is shifted by the solar wind and resulted to ionization and excitation of the atmospheric constituents. With this, it emits lights of various colors and complexity.

NASA stated that the auroras-watching rockets will examine what is known as near-Earth space. This will help scientists in understanding more the planet's magnetic environment and the low-Earth orbit environment in which astronauts and spacecraft must travel.

The first mission is the Polar Night Nitric Oxide or PolarNOX mission that is conducted from Jan. 19 to January 31. The mission focuses on nitric oxide and the rockets to launch will monitor the Earth's atmosphere in the polar region. They will gauge the nitric oxide that shapes during displays of the Northern Lights.

Scott Bailey, the mission's principal investigator and an electrical and computer engineering professor at Virginia Tech, said that the aurora creates nitric oxide. But in the polar night, there is no significant process for destroying the nitric oxide. They believe it builds up to large concentrations. He further said that the purpose of the rocket is to gauge the abundance and altitude of peak abundance for the nitric oxide.

The second mission is named "Neutral Jets in Auroral Arcs." In this mission, two rockets will be launched simultaneously at different heights to gauge the aurora's profile. Rob Pfaff, the principal investigator for the mission and a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said that the mission will examine how the ionosphere's electrical fields drive the aurora's structure.

Meanwhile, two rockets will be launched into two various types of auroras in the final mission. The launch window for the second the third missions will be extended from Feb. 13 to March 3. The rockets from all missions will be launched from the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska, according to Live Science.