NASA's Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) project – a mission to explore electrical currents in Earth's upper atmosphere – has passed a crucial developmental milestone, after rigorous review, moving the mission from the design phase to the construction phase. EZIE will investigate auroral
This illustration shows the three CubeSats of NASA’s EZIE mission flying in formation above Earth. The spacecraft will study electrical currents in Earth’s atmosphere that link changes in the magnetosphere to effects at the Earth’s surface during geomagnetic storms – the same storms that trigger the colorful auroral displays.
EZIE will investigate auroral electrojets, which are powerful electrical currents flowing approximately 65 miles above the ground in the ionosphere, a region of Earth’s atmosphere rich in ions . These electrojets are connected to the beautiful auroras that dance across the polar night skies. They are part of a vast electrical circuit flowing between Earth and the surrounding space, out to some 100,000 miles away.
EZIE will fly three identical CubeSats that will orbit the globe in a pearls-on-a-string formation when it launches, which will be no earlier than September 2024. Each spacecraft will measure the electrojet current by imaging its “fingerprint.” The spacecraft will look at light being emitted from oxygen molecules below the electrojets at just 50 miles above the surface.
Funding for EZIE comes from the Heliophysics Explorers Program, managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The principal investigator for the mission is Jeng-Hwa Yee of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build the satellite instruments.
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