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The scary sound of Earth’s magnetic field
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By NASA
A salute is widely recognized as a display of respect, but did you know it also means ‘hello’ in American Sign Language?
It is one of the signs that Jesse Bazley, International Space Station/Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program integration team lead, subtly incorporates into his daily interactions with colleagues at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
In May 2021, Jesse Bazley worked his final shift as an Environmental and Thermal Operating Systems flight controller in the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Image courtesy of Jesse Bazley Bazley is hard of hearing, which has at times presented challenges in his daily work – particularly during his stint as an Environmental and Thermal Operating Systems flight controller for the space station. “Working on console [in the Mission Control Center], you must listen to dozens of voice loops at a time, sometimes in different languages,” he said, adding that the standard-issue headset for flight controllers was not compatible with his hearing aids. Bazley adapted by obtaining a headset that fit over his hearing aids, learning how to adjust the audio system’s volume, and limiting over-the-air discussions when possible.
Bazley has been part of the NASA team for 17 years, filling a variety of roles that support the International Space Station. One of his proudest achievements occurred early in his tenure. Bazley was an intern at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in 2006 when the space station’s Water Recovery System was being tested. The system converts the station’s wastewater into drinkable water for the crew. When he arrived at Johnson one year later, his first assignment was to assist with the system’s procedure and display development for its incorporation into the space station’s core operations. “Now, 16 years later, it is commonplace for the space station to ‘turn yesterday’s coffee into tomorrow’s coffee’,” he said.
Jesse Bazley supporting the Atmosphere and Consumables Engineer console during the STS-127 mission in July 2009. NASA His favorite project so far has been integrating the station’s Thermal Amine Scrubber – which removes carbon dioxide from the air – into station operations. “I worked it from the beginning of NASA’s involvement, helping the provider with software testing and the integration of a brand-new Mission Control Center communications architecture,” he said.
Today, Bazley works to integrate subject matter experts from Johnson’s Flight Operations Directorate (FOD) into the processes of the International Space Station and Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Programs. “I help pull together FOD positions on topics and coordinate reviews of provider materials to ensure that the operations perspective is maintained as development moves forward,” he explained.
While Bazley no longer supports a console, he must continue adapting to difficult hearing environments. He uses the captioning tools available through videoconferencing software during frequent team meetings, for example. “It’s important to understand that people have visible and invisible disabilities,” he said. “Sometimes their request for a remote option is not because they want to avoid an in-person meeting. It may be that they work best using the features available in that virtual environment.”
Bazley also chairs the No Boundaries Employee Resource Group, which promotes the development, inclusion, and innovation of Johnson’s workforce with a focus on employees with disabilities and employees who are caregivers of family members with disabilities.
From these diverse roles and experiences, Bazley has learned to listen to his gut instincts. “In flight operations, you must work with short timelines when things happen in-orbit, so you have to trust your training,” he said. “Understanding when you have enough information to proceed is critical to getting things done.”
Bazley looks forward to the further commercialization of low Earth orbit so NASA can focus resources on journeying to the Moon and Mars. “Aviation started out as government-funded and now is commonplace for the public. I look forward to seeing how that evolution progresses in low Earth orbit.”
His advice to the Artemis Generation is to consider the long-term impact of their actions and decisions. “What looks great on paper may not be a great solution when you have to send 10 commands just to do one task, or when the crew has to put their hand deep into the spacecraft to actuate a manual override,” he said. “The decisions you make today will be felt by operations in the future.”
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:01:20 Approximately 41 000 years ago, Earth’s magnetic field briefly reversed during what is known as the Laschamp event. During this time, Earth’s magnetic field weakened significantly—dropping to a minimum of 5% of its current strength—which allowed more cosmic rays to reach Earth’s atmosphere.
Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark and the German Research Centre for Geosciences used data from ESA’s Swarm mission, along with other sources, to create a sounded visualisation of the Laschamp event. They mapped the movement of Earth’s magnetic field lines during the event and created a stereo sound version which is what you can hear in the video.
The soundscape was made using recordings of natural noises like wood creaking and rocks falling, blending them into familiar and strange, almost alien-like, sounds. The process of transforming the sounds with data is similar to composing music from a score.
Data from ESA’s Swarm constellation are being used to better understand how Earth’s magnetic field is generated. The satellites measure magnetic signals not only from the core, but also from the mantle, crust, oceans and up to the ionosphere and magnetosphere. These data are crucial for studying phenomena such as geomagnetic reversals and Earth’s internal dynamics.
The sound of Earth’s magnetic field, the first version of the magnetic field sonification produced with Swarm data, was originally played through a 32-speaker system set up in a public square in Copenhagen, with each speaker representing changes in the magnetic field at different places around the world over the past 100 000 years.
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By European Space Agency
As BepiColombo sped past Mercury during its June 2023 flyby, it encountered a variety of features in the tiny planet’s magnetic field. These measurements provide a tantalising taste of the mysteries that the mission is set to investigate when it arrives in orbit around the Solar System’s innermost planet.
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By NASA
1 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Dr. Kenyon, far right, and three other umpires listen to the national anthem before the start of a baseball game.Credit: West Springfield Little League
As the director of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Dr. Jimmy Kenyon is used to making important decisions at work. He also likes to call the shots on the baseball field as a volunteer umpire.
In July, Kenyon packed up his gear and traveled to Ankeny, Iowa, as part of a four-man umpire crew for the Little League Intermediate 50/70 Baseball Central Region Tournament. He was selected for this crew assignment in May, as the Little League season was getting underway.
Dr. Jimmy Kenyon in action as a volunteer umpire during a Little League baseball game. Credit: West Springfield Little League “Making the call is part of the job at NASA Glenn, but it’s also something I enjoy as a volunteer umpire for Little League Baseball and softball,” Kenyon said. “It allows me to share the excitement of baseball and NASA with young players, who may very well be part of our future workforce someday.”
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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
Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Heliophysics Division Ionosphere Science & Research Sounding Rockets Sounding Rockets Program View the full article
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