High above the Earth’s North and South Poles, a steady stream of particles escapes from our atmosphere into space. Scientists call this mysterious outflow the “polar wind,” and for almost 60 years, spacecraft have been flying through it as scientists have theorized about its cause. The leading theory was that a planet-wide electric field was drawing those particles up into space. But this so-called ambipolar electric field, if it exists, is so weak that all attempts to measure it have failed – until now.
In 2022, scientists traveled to Svalbard, a small archipelago in Norway, to launch a rocket in an attempt to measure Earth’s ambipolar electric field for the first time. This was NASA’s Endurance rocketship mission, and this is its story.
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In 2022, scientists traveled to Svalbard, a small archipelago in Norway, to launch a rocket in an attempt to measure Earth’s ambipolar electric field for the first time. This was NASA’s Endurance rocketship mission, and this is its story.
Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
· Instagram: / nasagoddard
· X: / nasagoddard
· Facebook: / nasagoddard
#space #discovery #energy
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LearningTranscript
00:003, 2, 1!
00:04This is the Endurance rocket ship, and she's about to discover something incredible and
00:08fundamental about the Earth.
00:11So why here?
00:12What makes Earth this special place that we all call home?
00:16One of the reasons may be due to the energy fields that our planet creates.
00:21So the first one's gravity.
00:22You're very familiar with gravity.
00:24It's important for life because it's holding our atmosphere on.
00:28If you don't have enough gravity, your atmosphere tends to escape to space, like at Mars.
00:33The second field is the magnetic field.
00:36It's this shield that's protecting our planet from the stream of particles that comes from
00:41the sun.
00:42So our rocket has discovered and finally measured number three.
00:45It's called the ambipolar field, and it's an agent of chaos.
00:49It counters gravity, and it strips particles off into space.
00:53Whenever spacecraft have flown over the poles of the Earth, they felt this supersonic wind
00:58of particles called the polar wind flowing out into space.
01:03There must be some invisible force lurking there responsible for this outflow, but we've
01:07never been able to measure this before because we haven't had the technology.
01:11So we built the Endurance rocket ship to go looking for this great invisible force, right,
01:16this ambipolar electrical field for the first time.
01:19So we were expecting to hopefully find the source of this polar wind, but what we weren't
01:23expecting was this other thing that it does to our skies and to the atmosphere, which
01:27is just so profound.
01:30There's only one launch site in the world far enough north to actually try and launch
01:36into this thing.
01:37And it's in the very north of this tiny island called Svalbard, and it's off the coast of
01:41the north of Norway, which meant a little bit of a trek to get it to the launch site.
01:54About to sail today from Mungerbyen to Ny-Ålesund, off the coast, for about 14 hours.
02:06We had a couple of days of being completely whited out, and now it's calm in this beautiful
02:12country.
02:13I have a feeling this might be the day.
02:18Solar.
02:19Solar go.
02:20Radar.
02:21Go.
02:22Mission control, this is Endurance.
02:24Go flight.
02:25We are go for launch.
02:27I think we're about to launch a rocket.
02:30Three, two, one.
02:33Liftoff.
02:35Touchdown.
02:43During the 15-minute suborbital flight, we successfully measured this ambipolar field
02:48for the first time.
02:50When you add up all of the strength of it over the whole flight, a whole potential drop
02:54is only about half a volt.
02:55And that's nothing, right?
02:56That's about as strong as one of those tiny little watch batteries.
02:59But that's exactly the amount that you need to explain this polar wind escape, this outflow.
03:06Because we measured it for the first time, we can actually understand the role it plays
03:13in the atmosphere.
03:14And despite being weak, it's incredibly important.
03:17It counters gravity and it basically lifts the skies up.
03:21It's like this conveyor belt that's lifting this atmosphere up into space.
03:26So like us, you're probably left with a lot of questions, right?
03:29What does this field do?
03:30What's it for, right?
03:32How has it shaped the planet?
03:33And I can't tell you yet.
03:36This field is so fundamental to understanding the way the planet works.
03:41It's been here since the beginning alongside gravity and magnetism.
03:45It's been lofting particles to space and stretching up the sky since the beginning.
03:51It's probably had an impact on the evolution of the atmosphere.
03:54I can't tell you how much yet.
03:56It may even have left a mark on the oceans.
03:58How much, I don't know.
04:00This field is a fundamental part of the way Earth works.
04:04And now we've finally measured it, we can actually start to ask some of these bigger
04:08and exciting questions.
04:16NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
04:20California Institute of Technology
04:25NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
04:30California Institute of Technology
04:35NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
04:40California Institute of Technology