The Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, is a wonder of the world that has mystified and puzzled people for thousands of years. While these dancing beams of light that can be seen in our own Alaskan backyard are not anything new to NASA and the scientific community, a new experiment to better understand them is taking place. Yair Ben-Dor has more.
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00:00The Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, is a wonder of the world that has
00:06mystified and puzzled people for thousands of years.
00:09While these dancing beams of light that can be seen in our own Alaskan backyard are not
00:14anything new to NASA and the scientific community, a new experiment to better understand them
00:20is taking place.
00:21Fizz.org reports three NASA-funded rockets are set to launch from Poker Flat Research
00:27Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, in an experiment that seeks to reveal how auroral substorms
00:34affect the behavior and composition of Earth's far upper atmosphere.
00:39The experiment's outcome could upend a long-held theory about the aurora's interaction with
00:44the thermosphere.
00:46According to Space.com, while scientists have a general understanding of auroras and their
00:52activity, each instance of the phenomenon exhibits unique movements and behaviors.
00:59Understanding different aurora behaviors could lend new insights about the space weather
01:04environment around our planet.
01:07The name of this experiment is Auroral Waves Excited by Substorm Onset Magnetic Events,
01:14or AWESOME, which it totally is.
01:16Pink, blue, and white vapor traces from these rockets should be visible across much of the
01:22northern Alaska sky between March 24th and April 6th.
01:27While the rocket launches must happen very early in the morning, it's definitely worth
01:33a watch.