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By NASA
6 Min Read NASA Discovers a Long-Sought Global Electric Field on Earth
The geographic North Pole seen from the Endurance rocket ship at 477 miles (768 kilometers) altitude above the Arctic. The faint red and green streaks at the top of the image are artifacts of lens flare. Credits: NASA Key Points
A rocket team reports the first successful detection of Earth’s ambipolar electric field: a weak, planet-wide electric field as fundamental as Earth’s gravity and magnetic fields. First hypothesized more than 60 years ago, the ambipolar electric field is a key driver of the “polar wind,” a steady outflow of charged particles into space that occurs above Earth’s poles. This electric field lifts charged particles in our upper atmosphere to greater heights than they would otherwise reach and may have shaped our planet’s evolution in ways yet to be explored.
Using observations from a NASA suborbital rocket, an international team of scientists has, for the first time, successfully measured a planet-wide electric field thought to be as fundamental to Earth as its gravity and magnetic fields. Known as the ambipolar electric field, scientists first hypothesized over 60 years ago that it drove how our planet’s atmosphere can escape above Earth’s North and South Poles. Measurements from the rocket, NASA’s Endurance mission, have confirmed the existence of the ambipolar field and quantified its strength, revealing its role in driving atmospheric escape and shaping our ionosphere — a layer of the upper atmosphere — more broadly.
Understanding the complex movements and evolution of our planet’s atmosphere provides clues not only to the history of Earth but also gives us insight into the mysteries of other planets and determining which ones might be hospitable to life. The paper was published Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024, in the journal Nature.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Lacey Young
Download this video and related animations from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio. An Electric Field Drawing Particles Out to Space
Since the late 1960s, spacecraft flying over Earth’s poles have detected a stream of particles flowing from our atmosphere into space. Theorists predicted this outflow, which they dubbed the “polar wind,” spurring research to understand its causes.
Some amount of outflow from our atmosphere was expected. Intense, unfiltered sunlight should cause some particles from our air to escape into space, like steam evaporating from a pot of water. But the observed polar wind was more mysterious. Many particles within it were cold, with no signs they had been heated — yet they were traveling at supersonic speeds.
“Something had to be drawing these particles out of the atmosphere,” said Glyn Collinson, principal investigator of Endurance at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the paper. Scientists suspected a yet-to-be-discovered electric field could be at work.
The hypothesized electric field, generated at the subatomic scale, was expected to be incredibly weak, with its effects felt only over hundreds of miles. For decades, detecting it was beyond the limits of existing technology. In 2016, Collinson and his team got to work inventing a new instrument they thought was up to the task of measuring Earth’s ambipolar field.
Launching a Rocket from the Arctic
The team’s instruments and ideas were best suited for a suborbital rocket flight launched from the Arctic. In a nod to the ship that carried Ernest Shackleton on his famous 1914 voyage to Antarctica, the team named their mission Endurance. The scientists set a course for Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago just a few hundred miles from the North Pole and home to the northernmost rocket range in the world.
“Svalbard is the only rocket range in the world where you can fly through the polar wind and make the measurements we needed,” said Suzie Imber, a space physicist at the University of Leicester, UK, and co-author of the paper.
On May 11, 2022, Endurance launched and reached an altitude of 477.23 miles (768.03 kilometers), splashing down 19 minutes later in the Greenland Sea. Across the 322-mile altitude range where it collected data, Endurance measured a change in electric potential of only 0.55 volts.
“A half a volt is almost nothing — it’s only about as strong as a watch battery,” Collinson said. “But that’s just the right amount to explain the polar wind.”
The Endurance rocket ship launches from Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard. Credit: Andøya Space/Leif Jonny Eilertsen Hydrogen ions, the most abundant type of particle in the polar wind, experience an outward force from this field 10.6 times stronger than gravity. “That’s more than enough to counter gravity — in fact, it’s enough to launch them upwards into space at supersonic speeds,” said Alex Glocer, Endurance project scientist at NASA Goddard and co-author of the paper.
Heavier particles also get a boost. Oxygen ions at that same altitude, immersed in this half-a-volt field, weigh half as much. In general, the team found that the ambipolar field increases what’s known as the “scale height” of the ionosphere by 271%, meaning the ionosphere remains denser to greater heights than it would be without it.
“It’s like this conveyor belt, lifting the atmosphere up into space,” Collinson added.
Endurance’s discovery has opened many new paths for exploration. The ambipolar field, as a fundamental energy field of our planet alongside gravity and magnetism, may have continuously shaped the evolution of our atmosphere in ways we can now begin to explore. Because it’s created by the internal dynamics of an atmosphere, similar electric fields are expected to exist on other planets, including Venus and Mars.
“Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field,” Collinson said. “Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin learning how it’s shaped our planet as well as others over time.”
By Miles Hatfield and Rachel Lense
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Endurance was a NASA-funded mission conducted through the Sounding Rocket Program at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The Svalbard Rocket Range is owned and operated by Andøya Space. The European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association (EISCAT) Svalbard radar, located in Longyearbyen, made ground-based measurements of the ionosphere critical to interpreting the rocket data. The United Kingdom Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Research Council of Norway (RCN) funded the EISCAT radar for the Endurance mission. EISCAT is owned and operated by research institutes and research councils of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Japan, China, and the United Kingdom (the EISCAT Associates). The Endurance mission team encompasses affiliates of the Catholic University of America, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Leicester, U.K., the University of New Hampshire, and Penn State University.
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Last Updated Aug 28, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
Mars: Perseverance (Mars 2020) Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
Perseverance Kicks off the Crater Rim Campaign!
Mastcam-Z mosaic made of 59 individual Mastcam-Z images showing the area Perseverance will climb in the coming weeks on its way to Dox Castle, the rover’s first stop on the crater rim. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Perseverance is officially headed into a new phase of scientific investigation on the Jezero Crater rim!
For the last 2 months, the Perseverance rover has been exploring the Neretva Vallis region of Jezero Crater, where rocks with interesting popcorn-like textures and “leopard spot” patterns have fascinated us all. Now, the rover has begun its long ascent up the crater rim, and is officially kicking off a new phase of exploration for the mission.
Strategic (longer-term) planning is particularly important for the Mars 2020 mission given the crucial role Perseverance plays in collecting samples for Mars Sample Return, and the Mars 2020 team undertakes this planning in the form of campaigns. Perseverance has now completed four such campaigns— the Crater Floor, Delta Front, Upper Fan and Margin Unit campaigns respectively— making the Crater Rim Campaign next in line. Given its broad scope and the wide diversity of rocks we expect to encounter and sample along the way, it may be the most ambitious campaign the team has attempted so far.
The team also has less information from orbiter data to go on compared to previous campaigns, because this area of the crater rim does not have the high-resolution, hyperspectral imaging of CRISM that helped inform much of our geological unit distinctions inside the crater. This means that Mastcam-Z multispectral and SuperCam long-distance imaging will be particularly useful for understanding broadscale mineralogical distinctions between rocks as we traverse the crater rim. Such imaging has already proved extremely useful in the Neretva Vallis area, where at Alsap Butte we observed rocks that appeared similar to each other in initial imaging, but actually display an Andy-Warhol-esque array of color in multispectral products, indicative of varied mineral signatures.
Our next stop is Dox Castle where Perseverance will investigate the contact between the Margin Unit and the Crater rim, as well as rubbly material that may be our first encounter with deposits generated during the impact that created Jezero crater itself. Later in the campaign, we will investigate other light-toned outcrops that may or may not be similar to those encountered at Bright Angel, as well as rocks thought to be part of the regionally extensive olivine-carbonate-bearing unit, and whose relationship to both Séítah and the Margin Unit remains an interesting story to unravel. Throughout this next phase of exploration, comparing and contrasting the rocks we see on the rim to both each other and those previously explored in the mission will be an important part of our scientific investigations.
The whole Mars 2020 science team is incredibly excited to be embarking on the next phase of Perseverance’s adventure, and we expect these results, and the samples we collect along the way, to inform our understanding of not just Jezero itself, but the planet Mars as a whole. We can’t wait to share what we find!
Written by Eleni Ravanis, PhD Candidate and Graduate Research Assistant at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
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Last Updated Aug 27, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
For every NASA astronaut who serves as a public face of human spaceflight, there are thousands of people working behind the scenes to make the agency’s missions a success. Even the smallest tasks impact NASA’s ability to explore and innovate for the benefit of humanity.
The team of administrative assistants and secretaries who work at the Johnson Space Center in Houston are acutely aware of this fact.
Whether they are coordinating meetings, arranging travel, or preparing materials and information for Johnson’s leaders, this team of over 90 individuals takes pride in providing critical support for the agency’s programs and managers. “We work hand-in-hand with management to get them where they need to go and ensure they have what they need to continue doing their important work,” said Carla Burnett, an executive assistant in the Center Director’s Office who is also the lead for all of Johnson’s administrative staff.
Carla Burnett participates in NASA’s celebration of the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s historic Moon speech, held at Rice Stadium in Houston on Sept. 12, 2022. Image courtesy of Carla Burnett Burnett has turned her long-standing passion for administrative work into a 41-year career at Johnson. She was just a youngster when she started working in the Astronaut Office mailroom – an opportunity that came through her high school’s Office Education Program. “Being a meek and mild high school student, sitting there with the astronauts, going through all of their fan mail – I was in awe! It was an absolute honor,” she said. That experience and earning recognition as her high school’s Office Education Student of the Year confirmed for Burnett that administrative work was the right career path for her. She said that fidelity and perseverance launched her from the Astronaut Office mailroom to a position as a crew secretary for two space shuttle flights. “Being a servant and helping others is what I really love about administrative work,” she said.
Today, Burnett supports Johnson’s senior executives and serves as a central resource for the rest of the administrative team. “They are all very self-sufficient and work within their own organizations,” she explained, but she may coordinate team-wide meetings, celebrations, or trainings, and she is always available to help answer questions. “We work consistently as a cohesive team. We are knowledgeable and, may I add, exceptional at what we do because we do it for the benefit and success of our Johnson family, NASA, and a plethora of communities!”
Burnett’s dedication to service is reflected across the administrative team, as is a commitment to caring for others. Edwina Gaines, administrative assistant for the Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program, said that being an instrument of team success and the opportunity to build long-lasting friendships are the most rewarding parts of her job. “That connection to people is important,” she said. “It’s important for me to know who I’m supporting or working with.”
Edwina Gaines snaps a selfie during a professional development event for administrative professionals in 2023. Gaines joined the Johnson team as a contractor nearly 20 years ago thanks to an opportunity that arose from her volunteer work at church. A church partner, the Houston Area Urban League, was helping a NASA subcontractor fill a secretarial position through the Small Business Administration’s HUBZone Program. Gaines got the job.
Since then, she has supported four programs and two institutional organizations, getting to know several agency leaders quite well. Gaines said she paid attention to little details – like which managers preferred printed materials over presentations, how they organized their offices, and when they typically stopped for coffee or something to eat – and worked to stay one step ahead of them. She recalled one occasion when she realized a manager had not taken a break in five hours and brought her something to drink. “It’s about taking care of the people who are doing the mission. If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t complete the mission,” she said.
Rick Pettis, the administrative officer for the Center Operations Directorate, appreciates being part of a great team. Pettis has worked at Johnson since 2014, when he retired from the U.S. Navy after 23 years. “I enjoy helping people with problem solving,” he said. “Every day there will be someone who calls me to ask, ‘How do I get this done?’”
Rick Pettis poses with a spacesuit display.Image courtesy of Rick Pettis The administrative team’s work involves other highlights, as well. “When I met my first astronaut, I was in awe,” said Dottie Workman, a secretary supporting Johnson’s External Relations Office. “I couldn’t believe that someone so important was walking around the campus just like everyone else. He was so nice – he shook my hand and took the time to talk to me.”
Workman has been a civil servant for 52 years and 29 of those have been spent at Johnson. “My career has taken me all over the United States and Germany,” she said. “When my son was in the military and stationed at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio he said, ‘Mom, why don’t you move to Texas?’ I didn’t have a good reason to say no, so here I am!”
Dottie Workman met J.J. Watt, former professional football player with the Houston Texans, during his visit to Johnson Space Center. Image courtesy of Dottie Workman. Outside of meeting and interacting with astronauts, Workman said being able to share NASA with her family and friends is her favorite part of working at Johnson. “It is always exciting to see their reaction,” she said.
Burnett is thankful for a united team that understands the value of their work. “I’m grateful to work with a group of professionals who know the significance of propelling today’s men and women into the next generation of deep space for years to come,” she said. “We are Artemis proud!”
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By NASA
4 Min Read Into The Field With NASA: Valley Of Ten Thousand Smokes
NASA scientists begin a day’s field research in Katmai National Park. Credits:
NASA/Patrick Whelley In June 2024, the Goddard Instrument Field Team (GIFT) hiked deep into the backcountry of Alaska’s Katmai National Park to study the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, site of the largest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century. The team’s task: traverse a vast volcanic debris field layered with glacier ice, gathering data and samples to help us better understand this place on Earth and similar terrain on other worlds.
Buried glaciers on Mars and Earth. Top: Orbital view of partially-exposed ice beneath an eroding deposit on Mars, from HiRISE. Bottom: Edge-on view of a partially buried glacier in Alaska with a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) device in the foreground, from the Goddard Instrument Field Team. Novarupta, the volcano that erupted here in 1912, ejected more than three cubic miles of ash from Earth’s subsurface. The ice nearby is now insulated by, and mixed with, thick layers of geologically “young” volcanic debris. (For comparison, many of the eruption sites NASA teams study are tens of thousands to millions of years old.) Mars, too, has glaciers and ice sheets covered in layers of airfall materials, including dust and volcanic ash.
On Mars, as on Earth, some of the planet’s history is in disguise. Ancient volcanic materials are buried underneath newer deposits of ashy debris. Patterns in these layers (think thickness or thinness, color and texture, chemical and mineral signatures) hold a lot of information, but the message isn’t always clear. Erosion and other surface processes hide evidence of past eruptions, even enormous ones. Since relatively fresh volcanic material blankets the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, it’s an ideal place to observe the early stages of these changes.
Cherie Achilles raises a rock hammer as Alexandra Matiella Novak stands by with a hand-held spectrometer and Alice Baldridge holds a container of rock samples. The hand-held spectrometer gives on-the-spot information about what its targets are made of, helping the team decide which samples to collect and bring back to the lab. In three days of violent eruption, Novarupta blasted an uncommonly wide variety of clays, minerals, and volcanic rocks throughout the surrounding valley. Since then, hot, sulfurous gases have filtered up through underground channels and escaped into the air via countless fumaroles (a.k.a. the “ten thousand smokes”). Fumaroles, together with erosion and other alteration processes, affect how minerals near Novarupta move and change. Research here can help us understand mineral movement and alteration on Mars and other worlds, too. The range of starting materials and alteration patterns in this valley, all from a single eruption, is difficult to match anywhere else.
Heather Graham studies a fumarole – a place where volcanic gases escape from underground – using a hydrogen sulfide collector and sampling equipment. Their goal: check the fumarole for encrusted evidence that microscopic organisms once lived here, consuming energy and changing the rocks’ composition. Research on these kinds of biosignatures helps us understand what the search for life could look like on other worlds. It’s a tough field site to access, especially with heavy science instruments. GIFT worked closely with local collaborators including Katmai National Park to coordinate the expedition. After years of planning and months of training, twelve field team members gathered and geared up in Anchorage, Alaska. Two tiny airplane flights, one all-terrain bus ride, and sixteen hiking miles later, they set up a base camp. From there, small groups hiked out and back each day, gathering data and sample material from throughout the valley.
Left to right: Tabb Prissel, Emileigh Shoemaker, Heather Graham, Andrew Johnson, Justin Hayles, Aditi Pandey, and Patrick Whelley hike out of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Scientists teamed up to carry large equipment from place to place and bring each other data from far-flung targets. Some results were predictable, like a new library of samples collected from several different “packages” of differently-composed volcanic debris. Some were surprising–like a core sample that came up containing a pocket of empty space instead of buried glacial ice.
Emileigh Shoemaker and her team use Ground Penetrating Radar (the red box shown here is the GPR antenna) to gather information about long stretches of Earth’s subsurface before physically breaking ground. Here, Shoemaker stands on a huge pile of volcanic ash; hidden beneath the debris is a glacier. GPR data, combined with core samples, soil moisture measurements, and pits dug at strategic locations, can reveal how the glacier is preserved. Analyzing the samples, processing the data, and putting it all together will take time. This is the beginning of GIFT’s Novarupta research, but it’s a chapter of a science story long in the making. Previous studies of the 1912 eruption and its aftermath influenced this expedition’s science plan. The 2024 data and samples, and the new questions arising from the team’s time in the field, are already shaping ideas about future work. NASA has visited before, too. Apollo astronauts and their geology trainers spent time in the Valley in 1965, finding it an unusually Moon-like place to study.
Fieldwork still plays a role in astronaut training–and in advancing lunar science. For example: Novarupta’s chemistry is partly a result of Earth’s plate tectonics. The Moon has volcanic landscapes with similar chemistry, but no tectonic plates. So, what else could explain the parallel? To help address this question, the 2024 team collected samples and ground-truth data from a range of rock formations comparable to the Moon’s Gruithuisen Domes.
Tabb Prissel, Aditi Pandey, and Justin Hayles at Novarupta. The dome of dark rubble behind the scientists is what’s left of the volcano itself: in 1912, material erupted from this spot buried miles of glaciated valley. On Earth, the Moon, Mars, and beyond, geologic processes encode pieces of our solar system’s history. Volcanic deposits store details about a world’s insides at the time of an eruption and evidence of what’s happened at the surface since. Rippling fields of sand dunes, gravel, and ash record the influence of wind where atmospheres exist, like on Venus, Mars, and Titan. Glaciers can tell us about climate history and future–and on Mars, ice research also helps to lay the groundwork for human exploration. It’s much easier to take a close look at these features and processes here on Earth than anywhere else. So, to understand planets (including our own), NASA field scientists start close to home.
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About the Author
Caela Barry
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Last Updated Aug 22, 2024 Related Terms
Analog Field Testing Earth Earth Science Earth Surface & Interior Goddard Space Flight Center Planetary Environments & Atmospheres Planetary Geosciences & Geophysics Planetary Science Planetary Science Division Science & Research Science Mission Directorate The Solar System Uncategorized Explore More
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By European Space Agency
ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite has been launched, paving the way for a potential constellation of satellites that would provide more frequent data not only to enhance short-term weather forecasts for Arctic nations, but for the world as a whole.
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