NASA Science Live: Aurora Glow, Electric Flow & the EZIE Mission [Episode #63]

Join NASA experts to talk about EZIE, a trio of just-launched NASA spacecraft that will study powerful electric currents in the sky. When colorful auroras glow, intense currents called “electrojets” flow. EZIE will help us better understand these electric currents by looking at the invisible magnetic fingerprints they leave in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

What is said in the film

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Welcome to NASA Science Live. I'm your host, Joy Ng. Today we are going to talk to NASA experts about the sun. It's incredible influence across our solar system. And a NASA mission that recently launched to study sun induced electric currents that flow high above Earth's poles.

This is your chance to interact with NASA experts and have your questions answered in real time. So be sure to send in your questions using the hashtag ask NASA in the comments. Wherever you're watching, NASA's Electro jet Zeeman Imaging Explorer, or EZIE for short, is the first mission to measure the magnetic fingerprints of the auroral electro jets up close and in detail. The electro jets are central to the electrical circuit that connects Earth's magnetosphere to its atmosphere. The EZIE mission is part of NASA's Heliophysics Division, which studies the sun as well as its influence on Earth and the entire Solar System.

The EZIE mission launched just a few days ago on March 14th, with liftoff at 11:43 p. m. Pacific Time from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. EZIE launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket as part of the transporter 13 rideshare mission via launch integrator Maverick Space Systems at approximately 2 a. m.

Pacific Time on March 15th. The EZIE satellites were successfully deployed. You can see that happening here. The three EZIE satellites were deployed into orbit one by one to flight information around Earth's polar regions. And last week, the spacecraft sent signals to the ground to verify they are in good health and are operating normally during the 18 month mission.

EZIE's trio of CubeSats will map the auroral electro jets to uncover their structure and evolution. Auroral electro jets are these intense electric currents that are part of the aurora, which are sparked by the sun's activity. They can be responsible for large magnetic disturbances on the ground that can affect things like powerlines and transformers. So I have two guys with me today who can tell us more about the EZIE mission, the activity on the sun. And so with us now is Doctor Larry Kepko, who is the EZIE mission scientist from NASA, and Doctor Nelli Mosavi-Hoyer, who is the E mission program manager from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Thank you so much for joining me. My pleasure. Thanks for having us. So can you start by explaining a little bit about your roles? Nelly, why don't you give us.

Sure. Yeah. So, as you mentioned, I'm the program manager for EZIE Mission. I have a very exciting job. My job is basically to make sure that the mission is successful in every, like, NASA mission.

The scientists, they decide where they want to go, which planet they want to visit, what kind of the data they want to collect, and then the engineers, they help with bringing that vision to reality. They make the spacecraft, the instrument, the systems, how we get there, what kind of data to collect. And my job is to make sure that the engineers and the scientists, they work together nicely, and they have all the, resources that they need, the technical resources, financial resources that they need to make sure that the mission is successful. We understand as a team what kind of risks exist, and make sure that we can resolve and mitigate those risks. And also, my job is to make sure that we are on cost and schedule.

And at the end, the mission, not only we provide the scientific data that we promise NASA, but also stay on cost and the schedule, and the mission is successful at the end. And what about you, Larry, and what's called the mission scientist? I am a NASA civil servant, so I work for the federal government. My primary responsibility in that role is at every stage of the mission, from when it's formulated to design integration, testing all the way to launch and to the end of the mission. As I'm a steward of the taxpayers investment in the mission, as a civil servant, that's my responsibility.

I know this mission went to a very rigorous competition. And once it was selected, the mission committed to solving a specific science question, in this case, solving the mystery that there were electric jets. I serve as an independent set of eyes and ears. Nellie works with the team to make sure that on a daily basis, they're doing what they're supposed to be doing to get the spacecraft up and out. And I'm there to watch, just to make sure that if something happens or changes are made, something goes wrong, that we're still capturing the science that we need to capture.

Now, thankfully, EZIE didn't really have any issues going through the whole development process, so my job was fairly easy. But at the end of the day, we just simply are there to watch and make sure we maximize and, the science return for the taxpayer. Thank you both. So let's get into today's main topic, which is EZIE. I mentioned earlier that this mission is going to study auroral electric jets.

These are the electric currents near Earth's polar regions that are present when auroras glow in the sky. So can you tell me why scientists are interested in studying this area? Larry? Yep. That's right.

So I am a card carrying auroral scientist. I have a PhD in space physics. I work here at Goddard Space Flight Center in the Heliophysics Science Division. Heliophysics is the study of the sun and its interaction through all objects in the solar system. Now, what you see, behind us is a picture of the aurora, probably from the International Space Station.

And that's exactly what EZIE is going to study. EZIE Will study the currents that flow through these, auroras you can see here. Now, then these Aurora, we have electrical currents, and these electrical currents flow just 70 miles above our head. It's pretty amazing, if you think about it. If you could drive there straight up, it would take you about an hour, to get this very exciting, dynamic region.

You know, within these, Aurora, the currents flow just like current you have at home. You plug something into the wall, a current flows in your wire. It's the same sort of process that happens, in space, these currents flow because of the interaction with the sun and the solar wind. So the wind is that stream of particles that come from the sun on a daily basis, and how they interact with the Earth's magnetic field. And that interaction causes currents to flow, throughout the ionosphere, that layer just above our heads.

Now, these currents push about a million amps of currents, through the ionosphere. Just to put that in perspective, if you’re not familiar with how much current that is a typical household appliance, like your refrigerator, your hair dryer and things like that might be just a few amps. If you've ever had your circuit breaker trip, you might have drawn 15 or 20 amps. And, you know, here, just above our head again, just an hour above our head by car, we have a million amps, flowing in. And that's, that's really quite neat.

And have them also associated with the Aurora is, super exciting as well, because the aurora just so beautiful. And there are a lot of questions about these currents, their structure, how they form and they grow and dissipate over time. Questions we don't have answers to, question with great societal relevance. And it's these questions that EZIE is going after that is very cool. So I am curious, how will these three individual spacecraft operate together to collect measurements?

Yes. Well, I can help answering that a little bit. So we have three, a small CubeSat, and you are about the size of a suitcase, so they are not that big. They are following a science orbit. Each orbit, it's about 90 minutes.

So each spacecraft, has 16 orbits in 24 hours. And we have three spacecraft. So we have 48 times that we can make measurements in a day. So we are providing already a lot of science data to our scientists. And we are very excited.

These are spacecraft for two to ten minutes separate, you know, separated from each other. And I actually have a small model of the CubeSat. This is actually was built by students in Cesar's, in Arizona. So I want to thank them for making these CubeSat and these three CubeSats. They follow each other in orbit and they don't have a proportion.

It's very neat the way that we make manage to, get them slower or faster. It's by changing the orientation of their solar panels. So this way it makes it go, slower. This makes it faster. So it's a lot of engineering to make decisions how to fly this 3D spacecraft, to make sure that the separation between of them is 2 to 10 minutes away from each other, then each spacecraft has a very smart instrument that the instrument, it's called microwave electro jet magnet down the gram that it's, again, the instrument that, we had collaborated with our friends at JPL to build.

And these instruments are constantly, they have four channels that are looking at the, vibration of oxygen molecule the ignition of oxygen. molecule at 118GHz. This is a very well known phenomena that oxygen, you know, emits at 118GHz. So if you have, for example, a very good instrument like a spectroscope, you can see that emission line of the oxygen, then in presence of magnetic field, that oxygen to 118GHz can split. And that's really the amount of this split.

It depends on how much they are introduced to magnetic field. So we have all the information about the magnetic field and based on that. But we have the we can go back here because magnetic field and current are related to each other. And we do a backward calculation. And we found that all those high intense points that Larry just talked about it, and we will map and image them for the first time.

So this is a very new technique. This is for the first time that we are using this technique. With three cubesats. And you know, as I mentioned, we have a lot of data because each spacecraft has four channels. So our scientists are going to be super busy for the next 18 months to analyze all those data and give us the map of the over electrojets Larry, anything that you wanted, that was a very thorough, thorough answer.

So now I think that's good. So we have, you know, charged particles coming from the sun all the time that can also create space weather events, if they're directed towards us. So how will the EZIE mission help in the prediction of space weather? Yeah, EZIE. Really helped quite a bit in terms of space weather.

As you mentioned, we are constantly bombarded by activity from the sun to the photons to the solar wind to particles, and they're constantly driving types of space weather. They're various types of space weather that we have to deal with. One, of course, you might be familiar with is the radiation belts, the Van Allen belts. And that's around Earth all the time. The space station is sort of in that regime where they have to take care of that and be aware of it.

If we're going to the moon and Mars, with our with or with people tend to be we're very well aware of the kind of space weather effects you get when you leave our protective bubble. And now here in our protective bubble of, Earth, we are mostly safe. Except for one thing. These currents are flowing high above our head. Can cause, you know, perturbations on the ground.

And really tough perturbations are tough to deal with. So what on Earth, we have 1 million amps going above our head just a mile. 60 miles above our head. And any current that flows produces a magnetic field. We know that.

We measure the magnetic field on the ground all the time. EZIE is measuring the magnetic field, but remotely. Now, when a magnet school is constant, no problem. We can handle a constant magnetic field. But when that magnetic field changes very rapidly, you induce a current somewhere else.

So you might be familiar at home. You everyone you know, you have a phone now you can charge remotely. You put on a little magnetic charge remotely or a toothbrush, something like that. That's the same process that happens in space. You charge that remotely by changing a magnetic field.

You drive a current and the other system, and that current then charges your phone or charges your your battery and so on. Same thing happens here that we have a million amps of current that might be changing right above our heads, that drives current on things in the ground, like power lines, power grid sensitive electronics, and especially during strong events when things move southward. We're not used to it. That can cause issues. In fact, is a very famous event from 1859, the Carrington event, the largest, storm we've ever seen.

And in that storm, at least anecdotally, back when we had telegraph operators who had miles and miles of long wires and all that activity moved south, the high activity above the in the world zone created currents that flow along those, those telegraph wires and actually causing the burning spark. Now you can imagine doing that in today's society. You don't want that to happen. You could burn out power grids and things like that. So understanding how that happens is actually one of the primary goals of EZIE.

Well, it sounds like EZIE will be incredibly useful. So last year there were these big Aurora events that appeared farther south than what is typical. Can you explain you know why that occurred. Yeah. So as Larry mentioned, the sun i very active and constantly a the sending to space, these high energy particles, these high energy particles, they can travel up to 1,000,000 mile per hour.

So very very fast. And we were very lucky on Earth that we have the earth shield that it shows in this picture that is protecting us and also the atmosphere. But on the North Pole, on the South Pole, where the, field lines curve inward, it's where the field it's a little bit less. And these high energy particles, they can sneak in, from the North Pole and South Pole. And when they hit the oxygen and nitrogen, they give this beautiful, colorful green color and pink color, and, you know, every also, sun has a cycle cooler cycle.

And last year and even right now, we are on the, the high peak of the solar cycle. So sun is always active, but it's even more active. And we're actually very happy about that because we are over the right time and, right spot to make these measurements as the sun is very active and when the sun is very active, these high energy particles can sneak even further toward the south. And last year we saw aurora even at south of Arizona and Texas. So that's a very exciting time for the scientists that they are seeing.

The sun is this active. And EZIE has launched on the right time. That's fascinating. And it was also an exciting time for anyone that witnessed them as well. So is there any way for people who spot over us to let NASA no.

Yeah. So you can go to science on NASA to go live citizen science. Some text may pop up on the screen here in a minute. Within there. There you go.

Within there's something called the aurora. So and so Aurora. So this is a little button that you scroll around. You can report your own aurora sightings. And they will then go out to the network, citizen scientist, Aurora, it's really important to have citizen scientists, you know, NASA, we're pretty large agency, but we can't be everywhere all at once, and particularly during large events like we just had, those aurora, that activity moves south like we have designed our instruments, to measure the aurora where they occur normally, which, funnily enough, is not at the North or South Pole.

It's actually the worst place to be. You will not see. Ever see the Aurora North Pole? Would you see the Aurora in a band called the Aurora? All the one that goes through middle of Canada to Finland, Scandinavia, Iceland and so on.

And yet during extreme activity it pushes south, to, you know, Florida, Arizona and so on. You see it here, that sort of green line there, that circle and the Aurora oval, that's where you see aurora. You can imagine that just moving southward to lower latitudes. Now, when you move southward to lower latitudes, all of our instrumentation, at least on the ground, can't see it. We can't actually measure that anymore.

And so we rely on citizen science, to help us out. Now, I just talking just, a few weeks ago to a citizen scientists in Canada who designed his own instrumentation on this beautiful, amazing instrumentation that that captures the aurora and he had gone out last year for this giant storm and put his arrays out, and he found all the aurora went south of him. He didn't see anything, had to look far south, and just all the tops of the aurora that was over the United States. Now everybody has a cell phone camera now, and these cameras are really quite remarkable. And then capture the beautiful imagery, the aurora.

And so people can capture that. You can go online, you can submit your photos, and they then become part of the science archive that we used, to analyze our science. Thank you. So that is another way you can participate with this mission, specifically that we'll talk about in a few minutes. So stay tuned.

But for now, we'll we have a lot of questions coming in online. And remember, you can submit yours by commenting on the stream wherever you're watching or by using the hashtag ask NASA. So let's jump in. Our first question is from Sam Bird on X, and they ask, how much energy do the auroras produce? Larry, I think this question is it's a good question.

I have to get out my calculator and do the math. I wasn't quite ready to do that. You know, I, yeah, I don't have a good answer for that. I guess maybe we could follow up on that. Or I could do something a little break.

Okay. Sounds good. So our next question is a viewer on YouTube, and they ask, how exactly does the mission work? How does the mission work? So, the mission, as, we talked about, it's really to understand and map the aurora electrojets for the first time.

And how we are doing that. We are sensing the oxygen molecule. We talked about that. The oxygen molecule emits the, emission line at 118GHz. And in the presence of magnetic field, those emission lines get this split.

And we look at those splits. And based on that, we understand how much magnetic field, we have, what's the direction of it, what's the intensity of it. And then we will work backward and map the current. So, that's from the science perspective and from the, engineering perspective, it's really those three CubeSats that are on the picture behind you. They do the magic.

They have these various smart instruments that they constantly make measurements, each of them 16 times per day. So, I hope that answered the questions. Or if Larry wants to add anything, I know, but I did get my calculator and figure it out. The number of how often it's, it's about 100 billion was you remember, we have a million amps of current flowing overhead. Typical appliances.

It's a few amps. You might think of a light bulb. The old style light bulbs would be 100W. Watts, 100W? We have 100 billion watts, lots of energy flowing overhead, and a typical auroral display.

Wow, that is impressive. A lot. It's a lot. It's a lot of energy up there. Okay, so our next question is from Christy on YouTube.

And they ask, Will the EZIE spacecraft take images of the Aurora? Yes, images. But it's not what the camera. So it's a very unique measurement that we are doing. We are you know, math by measuring the magnetic field.

So we'll have an image, but it's not the typical image that we are familiar with with the cameras. But it's a really interesting question. Yeah. It's really an image of the current that we've been talking about. You know, when you take a picture with your camera, you you capture the photons and you capture the aurora.

We're taking an image of really is the currents that are flowing in the ionosphere, by measuring max. And then there's some fancy math that we invert it and we see beautiful maps. So the data product we produce some EZIE is actually sort of like an image in a way of the current flowing in the ionosphere. Fantastic. So I want to take a moment to tell our viewers about a cool project the EZIE Team is working on to get the public involved in the mission.

The team is sending around 700 devices called magnetometers to learners across the United States. So let's take a look at how you can help scientists better understand the sun's effects on Earth. Using these instruments. The aurora or Northern and Southern lights have fascinated people for millennia. Many cultures have formed traditions around these mysterious dancing lights in the sky.

But hidden within them are secrets of the link between Earth and the sun, a link that scientists want to better understand so they can predict and therefore protect our technology from the impacts of space, weather, particles and energy from the sun, which reach Earth through the solar wind. Interact with invisible electric currents in our atmosphere, creating dazzling auroral light shows. But if strong enough, they can also disrupt technologies like GPS, satellites, communication systems and power grids to study the electrical currents. NASA is launching EZIE in 2025. The mission will put three small satellites, called CubeSats, in orbit around Earth to create maps of these electrical currents for the first time, and you can help learners can join our team by becoming citizen scientists.

What's a citizen scientist? They are members of the public like you, who collaborate with professional scientists by helping collect data about our world. And they make a big impact. Intimidated? Don't be our EZIE magnetometer maker kit, called EZIE Mag for short, provides everything you need to participate and can be used by learners of all ages.

Just like a professional engineer, you will build an instrument to collect valuable information about the world around you. Over the course of a year, your data will provide essential context for the measurements that EZIE satellites are making high above, helping them map the electrical currents, educational activities and design challenges which we provide will help learn Learners will be able to connect with EZIE researchers through interactive webinars, and even connect with each other through our Global Pen Pal program. Reach out to learn more about joining the EZIE Mag community and helping scientists protect our technology and our planet. What a wonderful project to get the public involved. So Nelly, you have an EZIE mag with you right now.

Can you tell us about the device? Sure. So we are very excited about this project. As you mentioned, this is for the first time that we are providing opportunity for the students to be scientists and help the scientists alongside the EZIE mission scientists. So this is a magnetometer.

It's a actually very good grade. Magnetometer. And Larry will talk about that and his experience with, this magnetometer. But the magnetometer it really helps. It's a scientific instrument that helps the strength direction and any changes in magnetic field that you can measure with this making, with magnetometer.

So our scientists are measuring the magnetic field from the Bob and the students. They can make the measurements from the ground and submit all their data, to the EZIE website. So the scientists will use that. So this is very valuable to be part of this, project. And also this it's very easy to use.

It has all the components that a real magnetometer will have. It has a GPS, it has a real time clock. It has a single board computer. It has sensors to measure the magnetic field. The orientation.

And all of it comes with the very easy instructions and the EZIE, mag website. So, please, look at this. If you're in school or you're interested, join and be part of the EZIE family. And I believe Larry you use this, maybe you can talk more about how easy it is to use this, EZIE mag. Yeah.

I was part of the original beta test program, just one of the when we developed a handful of them in, about a year and a half ago or so, was able to put together my son, who was ten at the time. No problem. Putting together took about an hour. I a little time lapse of it, putting together plug in and it worked. And we have it sitting in our backyard.

Today we show it to people when they come over. I've had the associate administrator over to my house, and she's seen it in our backyard, as it operating. And I remember just a few weeks after we had initially installed it, we had one of these giant solar storms come in and hit the Earth and compress the Earth. Remember what I said about currents flowing and produce magnetic field? Well, there's a current that surrounds, our, our, you know, our main use here.

And they got closer to us because the current was closer. We measured a stronger magnetic field. And I actually measured that with my EZIE magnetometer on the ground. And I remember taking a picture of I had on the screen. I took a picture of it, compared it with the proper USGS magnetometer on Virginia, and they were just almost identical.

And I really excitedly texted the, the science team said, look, we we can do science in our backyard. So it's actually really wonderful, a little project. And I just want to also acknowledge Rob Barnes and Doctor Jasper Yellow for, their support and their hard work to develop these magnetometers. And they've been a big part of the EZIE family. What an amazing project.

So I hope some of the viewers today will get involved. You can learn more on EZIE mag dot data APL, dot edu. Okay, so let's get into a few more questions that are coming in online. We have next question from Chris Street on YouTube. And they ask, Will this help predict solar storms more accurately?

Do you want me to go ahead? You can take it. You go ahead. Okay. So there's different aspects of what we call solar storms.

Typically when you say the word solar storm, we think about something that erupts from the sun. Coronal mass ejection. So anytime you've seen the people, pictures from SDO, Soho stereo and you see the giant, you know, complex thing, it blows off the sun and comes towards us. That's a coronal mass ejection. And that's the thing that hits us maybe 2 to 3 days later and causes what we call geomagnetic storms when it reaches the Earth.

So EZIE will not help predict the eruption of the chromatic vacuum, but we will be able to predict on our side is what happens when it comes here. So I mentioned earlier, the currents flying overhead and causing, perturbations on the ground. We call those geo magnetically induced currents or dis ease. And we don't really understand very well how and when they occur or how to predict their intensity. EZIE will help with that for sure.

We'll be able to that will be flying over those structures that create high seas. And by understanding what causes their evolution, how they evolve, you know, their intensity, we'll be able to see that into models, which then maybe, hopefully will help, with prediction of disease and space weather. Thanks. And just to add to what you, Larry, very beautifully explained. Even the EZIE mag will help with that too, because now, for the first time, we have 700 magnets motors that are making this measurement.

And when you have 700 good data, the amount of testing and even you can use it for data trending and prediction that, just a lot of, help to our scientists as well. Definitely. Okay. So our next question is from door on X and they ask, how do you control the satellites? That's a really good question.

So, the spacecraft, as I mentioned, they are very small and they don't have a propulsion. So the way that we control them, it's by, ordering or commanding the spacecraft that which direction? We want the solar panels to be. So, we can make them go faster or a little slower, but it's really by controlling the solar panels, on their spacecraft that we control the spacecraft. And, you know, they are in a very solid orbit right now, and.

Oh, this the movie shows very nicely that how we are, you know this when it's looking upward, it's calibrating. Right now it's making measurements when it's in the green area that are, after it comes off the aurora, we do another calibration. And after the calibration is completed, this is the area that we control, the spacecraft to make sure that we maintain the 2 to 10 minute separation between the spacecraft. Is it either is it possible to pull that video up again? Cause I want explain something that I didn't actually understand until I came and work at NASA.

It has to do with something called reaction wheels on a spacecraft. So you look at the spacecraft, it's straight, and then look how it rotates. The way it rotates is actually quite ingenious. It has a little wheel inside. It actually has several wheels, one for each axis.

And if you want to spin it, like this way, this direction, you can see my hand. You send that direction, you spin the wheel the other direction, you put momentum in the other direction. The spaceship wants to stay in the opposite direction. It's as simple as that. You just have little wheels.

That's been one direction. Spacecraft moves the opposite direction and it is called reaction wheels. Is a very ingenious, simple, technique for controlling spacecraft. That's fascinating. So we have another question on YouTube.

And the question is how do you expect solar maximum to affect this mission? I think it will working out benefits because, you know what? We are looking at the events that are happening and how just this evolution of the current is changing. And with Sean being active, I think we'll have more opportunity to make the science collections that we want. So, I think the TI 30 in its at the right time, you know, the right season because we're very interested and understanding the summer solstice.

So, and now the sun is active, so colorful components are working in our favor to make sure that we have very good, science data collection that help us to unlock this, mapping and imaging of our electro jet. So you mentioned T13. Can you explain a little more what you mean by that? Oh, yes. The team 13.

It was the transporter 13, the beautiful picture of the lodge that you showed. So we were a share, right? How we launched, was actually 74 payloads were on that spacecraft. And it's very amazing that how much the technology has changed over the last couple years. Before and the maximum you could deploy 1 or 2 spacecraft.

And, it was very costly. Now with this technology, that space X and, a lot of, launch provider, satellite, provider like Maverick space system that they have these nice dispensers that you put the, satellite inside that. And it's like a suitcase that keeps you safe. Because, you know, the launcher has a lot of vibration. So this dispensers that it's open, it kind of keep your satellite safe.

And when it gets to the orbit that it likes you, like they will deploy you. So I think there was two different orbits for deployment, when we were deployed at 590km. So, yes, it's the transporter 13 that had we were launched with Falcon nine. So Melody on YouTube, how would a present day Carrington event affect our communication satellites? Wouldn't be great.

Thank you. There's a couple things that that we worry about. One, are the gases, the the current that flow in the atmosphere and produce, different currents on the ground. There's a famous recent event, 1989, in Quebec, during not a huge storm, not even close to the Carrington event, they knocked out the hydroelectric plant in Quebec. And so we do worry a Carrington event that hit at the wrong time could really, destroy many Transformers.

Knock out our power grid. It's really quite a concern. Also, satellites, they live in this environment out there with. Especially with particles. And now we've come to rely so much on satellites.

You know, we went from 20 years ago to having a few hundred satellites in space. Now we have thousands of satellites in space, and they're all vulnerable. They're all vulnerable, and we rely on them. Another thing that we saw with this last storm, you know, a year and a half ago or G. P.

S. issues. Now, EZIE. Doesn't study GPS issues, per se. But it can't event or any type of large solar storm can send these little ripples through the ionosphere.

And a GPS signal has to come through ionosphere that comes through and sees these little ripples and changes. You lose law. You you don't have precise positioning. And so we saw impacts, to our economy, to people not being able to know where they are. And nowadays we're landing airplanes.

We're finding things around with our GPS signals. You know, losing that capability can have a huge impact. So we need to be very well prepared. And of course, the United States got something called the Pro Swift Act that was passed a little while ago that really tried to harden our defenses against space weather. So the next question is from dockside on YouTube, and they ask, how long would the satellites be an orbit and how fast will they be traveling?

So this, spacecraft are for 18 months. They are in the orbit. I think they are traveling seven miles. Seven kilometers per second. I mean, I'm not exactly kilometers per second kilo, eight kilometers per second.

So they are going very fast. And, you know, to go over one orbit, as we mentioned, it's about 90 minutes. So, we have 60 times that the spacecraft can go on the area of the region of interest. So over the 18 months, we will be collecting a lot of data. Each spacecraft for channel three, a spacecraft.

So, so so I maintain you see, we have 12 measurements that we are looking at, these, ultra electro jets. And, by having the three year spacecraft, we can see how because these, electro jets are all the time evolving, and we can understand that how quickly they are evolving, how are they shaping? So having this new spacecraft help us a lot with answering that question as well. Patrick, on YouTube, ask, what are the EZIE satellites made of? That's an interesting question.

So, you know, this is different components have different materials, but the body of the, you know, the spacecraft, it's aluminum. Okay. And, a riff on YouTube asks, what are the scopes for fundamental physics in the EZIE mission? Fundamental physics. Right.

So heliophysics, which is again, the study of the science interaction to the solar system, has multiple components. One is the space weather component. The impact on society. And we have that, the other is the fundamental physics component you just asked about. And we have lots of missions that study fundamental physics.

Parker Solar Probe, for example, finds that the solar corona is saying the fundamental physics of heating acceleration, how they how the sun, gets hot angles for it. Multiscale is studying the fundamental physics of magnetic reconnection. Around Earth. I would say easier to the fundamental physics of how magnetic magnetized bodies interact with the sun. Any magnetized body, around the sun, Jupiter, Saturn, any of the planets and any asteroids with comets, with magnetic fields of the album have the same sort of interaction.

They drive currents. The currents are a standard part. Any object has a magnetic field. And so my understanding is that basic interaction here on Earth, we can then look at exoplanets, planets and different stars. And maybe we can use the signals, the kind of signals we see here on Earth and say, oh, there's a planet over there.

It has an atmosphere. It's fun with currents and things like that. So even though there's a scientific sort of an aspect of space, weather, humanity and try to understand our interaction is really is a very basic principle of how do magnetized bodies interact with the sun. So Erica on YouTube asks, was any I use during the the project? Any I I'm thinking about it.

I know that we will use that we can use the future data that we get and use it for because it's a lot of data, even the magnetometer, we can use it for data trending, but we did not use any specific AI. For this space mission. Okay, that really good question. Bangla bar on YouTube, they ask, what if the satellites loses connection? And happens actually, you know, it's sometimes it happens and we just have to make try to make connection to, you know, send a signal.

We don't give up if we lose connection, you know, we'll ask for more, communication. So the satellite, you know, it's always talking to the ground station. That's how we talk. And we try to get more time for the ground station so we can have emergency contact. So.

But it's actually something especially on the low Earth orbit. It's something that the satellite. See, and that's part of the planning that we know that we will see more like every 20 days because of especially, SCA event, the South anomaly region that you have, the radiation, it's very high. It could easily cause the satellite for a couple of hours to get disconnected and, loose communications. But we need to be persistent and continue talking to them.

If they don't, even if they don't want to answer the phone, we, you know, make sure that they talk to us. Okay. So our next question is Andrew Bennett on YouTube who asks will the astronauts aboard the International Space Station have work or missions that coincide with this study. So I'll give that a shot. It's a really great question.

It's really, interesting time in our life to have an orbiting laboratory right up there with, with, with people involved. The two instruments I'm aware of on the space station that are relevant, to us, one is called Codex. That codex has been up for maybe two months now, and it's a coronagraph and images, the sun and a completely new, and really cool way. And so from now, we can actually see, things coming from the sun. The other is, the atmospheric wave experiment, and that's looking down and looking at things like gravity waves that are, you know, affecting the upper atmosphere.

So from the space station, those are two that maybe aren't directly relevant, but we will utilize them in an ancillary sense. There's another mission that just launched, just a few days before it's called punch. It's the polar emitter to unify the corona and heliosphere. And it's interesting that is also looking at the sun. It has a coronagraph.

And and he looks like imagery, sort of looks at the all the stuff that's coming off of the sun. And what's kind of cool about that is it flies in that similar orbit is EZIE. And it's again, imaging. So it's not designed to measure the aurora, but it's gonna be looking through the aurora. And so what they consider noise if they want to get rid of is actually our signal.

And so we've been talking to that punch team since inception, about how we could use their data to look at the aurora they will just throw away because not part of their mission. How we can use their images of the aurora and link them to EZIE. And that's something that actually really excited about. That's awesome that you can, you know, connect with other missions. And there's so much more data to work with right?

So x y, z on x, how do you protect the satellites from potential impacts during space weather? Our satellites on the far side of the sun also impacted. Good question. So, I think one of the things that we do, the components that we use, we try to be radiation, tolerant. So there is a lot of testing that we do.

So the components that we use, they have like flight heritage. So we are very comfortable that to some extent they can, support the radiation. But again, the single event upset that happens. It could happen in no matter how much testing you've done. You know, for example, Van Allen probe, it was in to a spacecraft that went to the heart of the a radiation belt, but that was designed and we had a lot of shielding for that to make sure did protect the spacecraft.

But the low Earth orbit like EZIE. They don't have those kind of protections. But it's still we have a lot of flight heritage. So we are comfortable, that they can operate 18 months. And maybe even we go beyond to get extended mission, for EZIE.

I don't know what was the second part of the question. Our satellites on the far side of the sun also impacted during space weather events. Yes, they are all connected. So, they can be all impacted the same way. Yeah.

There's an interesting, the last solar cycle, we did not get a large Carrington style, storm back then. But stereo, when a NASA spacecraft was, was close to the other side of the sun. Totally different region. And when these core mass ejections leave the sun, they fill up a large portion of the heliosphere, the place in which we live, but not everything. And so we didn't see this large CME, but stereo did.

And that CME was moving so fast, it actually went off scale of the instruments. And if that didn't hit us, that would've been pretty close to a Carrington. And I think that event really, woke a lot of people up. So our next question is from Endeavor to Persevere on YouTube. And they ask, how do you protect the battery from solar radiation?

Larry, do you want to take that question? As you say, it's a gnarly question, but okay, how do you protect the battery from solar radiation robbery? Oh, I didn't understand the question. I can I can, see the batteries actually are are tough, actually, to be honest, there are a lot of requirements on battery. So batteries, as you know, if you tried to operate your phone or your camera, really cold environments, they don't work very well.

We found the same of lithium batteries sometimes that that you have, they're space based, but they're the same battery. And so when it's really cold, they don't work very well. Now, when the really hot, you know, work very well either. And what's tough about these orbits as we go into the shadow of the Earth and then when the sunlight of the Earth. And so these spacecraft have to keep that battery not too hot, not too cool.

So there is a lot of design work that goes in and how to either feed it, to keep it warmer or to take the power out and, and keep it cooler. But there's limited range of where you can operate the battery. We kind of very carefully designed that spacecraft to keep in that range. So Myles on Facebook asked, what is the advantage of using CubeSats for the EZIE mission? I think one of the advantages that, where low cost the science return, it's very high.

I always say the continuation was plastic. That means you can take a lot of risk. But the science of that, it's class A we're doing of making a lot of science new science for the first time. So I think the advantage of it, it's using a CubeSat like EZIE mission. You can lower the cost.

You can increase the development time. We had 40 months on the on developing these three CubeSat on three instruments. And I want to thank our partners at Blue Canyon Technology and, JPL, for their, help in developing this, mission. And really, I think, this is a new way of, collecting science in a low cost, fast rate that we are very excited. So, another question on YouTube is, what is powering EZIE.

So there are a couple mechanisms. One is the solar panels, of course, that they are, you know, constantly in each orbit. We have a couple hours that the sun, you know, that not a couple hours, couple minutes that there's still a solar panel is charging and then the can the charge gets stored in the battery, so the battery will keep the charge. And when we are on the dark side that the solar panels are not charging, we use the battery. So it's a very complex system that they have to work together to make sure that the satellite is constant.

We have enough charge. Okay. So our next question on YouTube again is how long does average space weather last for? You let me give that a shot. So again, different the different kinds of space weather and the broad range of space weather.

So mass ejection, starts with a flare, and that flare, if it's pointing in the right direction or wrong direction, can send particles to the Earth. Nodes can last several days, actually, that we're connected to the sun, and you can see it there and we're connected. That CME can take about 2 to 3 days to reach the Earth. And then when it reaches the Earth, it causes something called a geomagnetic storm. And that storm is when, you know, you squeeze the magnetosphere and those are last again, two to 3 to 5 days.

There comes a CME. Now lifting up the sun. The kind of event that, EZIE, really designed. That study is called a sub storm. Sub.

When you see beautiful movies that the Aurora, the things that happen very quickly, maybe they're over in 20 minutes. And so it's something about 20 minutes. The storm is about 3 to 5 days. Enhancements in the radiation belts. Can.

Depends on what kind. Sometime during really strong events, we get something really close to the Earth. You sometimes hear people talking about the inner inner zone. In that region, those can last years. And that's actually really quite, dangerous because it's a very energetic particles in that inner zone, very close to where our satellites operate.

So those are different timescales that you see. So, we're getting a lot of questions on YouTube. Our next one on YouTube is how long did it take to design and build the EZIE spacecraft? It's a really good question. So, for any NASA mission, there is about two years before you even propose you start thinking about this kind of mission.

What kind of science you want to take. And after you get selected and you go through the process of, the competition and you get selected EZIE mission talk about 40 months from phase B. Each phase, it has a different name. But then early on that you start designing till you, it's making your engineering model, the flight model, do a lot of testing, until it gets ready for launch. It was about 40 months, which is a very, interesting record for three CubeSats and three very complex instruments to be on time and on costs to, be developed.

So we are very proud of that. That's very impressive. Okay. So we have a question from Krishna on YouTube. And they ask, what is the single point of success of this project and how will it benefit citizens?

Now you think, yeah, I was thinking you might know your requirements from the top of your head, but I can see my answer different. Yeah, I mean, there are required things that we follow, but I think what it's really successful for every mission is the teamwork. You know, the teamwork and communication that we work together and making sure that we mitigate all the risks. Because at the beginning, when we start these projects, we know what kind of requirements we have and we need to meet. And you always need obstacles, issues.

But the teamwork, how you resolve that is the key for the success of every mission that how great the teamwork together, how hard they work together. Yes, the main science question of EZIE is really looking at these electric gets the concepts on the eyes here. And the big question that we developed in the last 20 or 30 years is what is the spatial scale of these, these electric jets? The textbook when I grew up, when I was in grad school in the 90s, we, picture they drew with these just lines. It's sort of like a picture you had earlier.

We saw the current. There is these horizontal lines. We view them as sort of these just long line currents from the ionosphere. All these inferred over the last decade or two is that actually that line probably isn't correct. It's probably for these little elementary, smaller current systems.

And our missions had not been able to really analyze that at all. You can't really see them from the ground very well. If you're too far away. And you can't do it with a single satellite, you don't see the evolutions in these multiple satellites. You need the imaging that we have with EZIE to give us these maps and these pictures with the different scale sizes of the current system.

So that's actually the main science objective is what is sort of this middle scale, this middle mushy scale that we can't more resolve. How do they drive the gases that only drive the electric? That's and that's the main science question of using. Right. So we have time for a final question.

And this is for both of you. Can you quickly tell me what advice do you have for viewers who might be interested in helping NASA study the sun and its influence across the solar system? Very good question. I think the main component is to be curious, be curious, and determine and follow your passion. And always push yourself.

I think when you are curious, you want to try to find the answer. It always take you to a beautiful places that you know you can't ever imagine. And so curiosity X for me was very important. I always loved the sun. I always was very, interested about the space.

But, I wasn't sure that I will have an opportunity in working for NASA. So my advice is to, for the young girls and boys, if you are determined and you are curious, you can achieve everything. I'm a a model of, like, a person that was able to be working on the space mission. So if I can, I'm sure you can, you know, make it happen, too. And always wanted to learn for me.

Like, when I finished my high school, I wanted to study electrical engineering and then get my masters and PhD, and it was always because I wanted to learn more. And, I think continue to learning. It's a very important key as well. Yeah. I always love this question because I always ask people, what got you into science, what is your story, how you like the science.

And, be curious is of course, extremely important. And I remember just a few weeks ago, I was talking to a colleague in Europe, who grew up in Lebanon, a while ago, and grew up in a very poor area and didn't have a lot of resources, but, a solar eclipse came by, and she was living in a house. It was a hole in the wall. And that eclipse, the wall, the the hole act as a pinhole camera and that pinhole camera projected the eclipse onto the floor of her house. And her dad said, get out a piece of paper and draw that solar eclipse.

And she sat down and she drew. And she had it for years, and it really inspired her, to enter science. And now she's a very well-respected planetary science in Europe. But it's it's an amazing story because children have this inherent curiosity, right? That we all are.

I'm jealous of them, right? We all get jaded as adults, and we don't feel as happy and curious. But the look at the universe to the eyes of a child, right. And this last, this last one to happen a year and a half ago. I think all of us were very excited to see the Aurora down at reasons we don't see it.

And I was I was actually working up on my kids school and my wife texted me, says, Larry, there's there's Aurora outside that ran outside. And I happened to see the Aurora above my kids school, Edna's Elementary, this beautiful picture of the Red War right above Veterans Elementary School. And I sent that off to the teachers and the principal to school. There it is right here. Yeah, it's right there.

And, and they took this picture and they shared it with their classroom. Every student at that school saw this picture, and they had questions about the aurora. And my wife went and answered questions about the Aurora. And just something simple like that, a picture that makes it relevant to them inspires curiosity. And hopefully we inspired a few kids to enter science to look at the world around you.

And just simple things like that. Look at the look at the world as children. Look at it, twice a child. That is great advice. Thank you both so much.

Oh my pleasure. Yeah. And thank you so much. Yeah. And thank you so much for joining us to discuss this incredibly important topic and mission.

Great. And thank you to everyone watching online. To stay updated on the sun, follow NASA Sun Science on Facebook and NASA's sun on X. We'll be sharing updates on those channels, as well as on NASA's website, about the EZIE mission and other missions we have studying the sun, so stay tuned. Thank you and see you next time.

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