Iowa researchers rejoice TRACERS launch | Physics and Astronomy – School of Liberal Arts and Sciences

The mission, conceived practically 9 years in the past by Iowa physics professor Craig Kletzing (who died in 2023 at age 65), will examine how Earth’s magnetic protect — the magnetosphere — protects our planet from the supersonic stream of fabric from the solar known as photo voltaic wind. As the satellites fly pole to pole in a sun-synchronous orbit, they may measure how magnetic explosions ship these photo voltaic wind particles zooming down into Earth’s environment — and the way these explosions form the house climate that impacts our satellites, know-how, and astronauts.

Dozens of scientists from Iowa — many joined by their spouses and households — journeyed to Lompoc, the city closest to Vandenberg, host to the SpaceX-operated launch pad abutting the Pacific Ocean. On launch day, some gathered in a small subject in downtown Lompoc to joyfully witness the launch, which was delayed by a day. Others ventured to a hill outdoors the town limits, adorned with TRACERS hats and T-shirts and cheering giddily as they watched the rocket rise in opposition to a backdrop of scrub grass hills and the ocean.

“It’s surreal. That’s the best way to describe it,” mentioned Amanda Lasko, an aerospace undertaking engineer on the Iowa TRACERS workforce who earned a level in electrical engineering from Iowa in 2019. “It’s been nearly 10 years of hard work for so many, and it feels great. I’m incredibily proud to be part of this mission.”

Standing subsequent to Lasko was Antonio Washington, who has labored on TRACERS since he graduated from Iowa in 2019. For two weeks, Washington labored in a single day shifts to help with prelaunch actions at Vandenberg. 

“I feel like we’ve been working so hard as a team, and to get to the finish point and see the rocket go feels incredible.”

Two days earlier than the launch, David Miles, affiliate professor in physics and astronomy at Iowa and principal investigator for TRACERS, spoke in regards to the mission throughout a public presentation on the Space and Missile Technology Center, a museum commemorating historic rocket launches at Vandenberg.

“The TRACERS mission has been in development for a long time and from a massive investment in space at the University of Iowa,” Miles mentioned. “It shows Iowa can develop a NASA mission of this caliber, and it shows our ability to contribute to space science in the future.”

Joe Westlake, heliophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., which oversees TRACERS and different missions involving the solar’s affect on planets and house, praised the data the mission is anticipated to yield.

“NASA’s heliophysics fleet helps to safeguard humanity’s home in space and understand the influence of our closest star, the sun,” Westlake mentioned in a NASA assertion. “By adding TRACERS to that fleet, we will gain a better understanding of those impacts right here at Earth.”

Kletzing first proposed the Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites, as TRACERS is understood, in October 2016. After successful preliminary funding in 2017 to completely develop the proposal, NASA in 2019 awarded the mission to the college, which stands as the biggest exterior analysis award in college historical past. 

“One of the long-term goals is to evolve toward ‘space weather’ models to improve our ability to utilize space as a resource,” Kletzing mentioned when the mission was totally funded. “TRACERS will be essential to achieve this goal.”

In the years since, an all-Iowa workforce of greater than 80 physicists, engineers, machinists, electronics and circuitry specialists, analysis scientists, and help workers — from undergraduate college students to tenured college — have been a part of TRACERS’ progress towards launch. A serious plank of that work concerned totally testing the devices that compose the mission’s science — and an illustration payload constructed at Iowa, known as MAGIC, which is able to take a look at new magnetic subject sensing know-how. Two of the devices, the Analyzer for Cusp Electrons and the Magnetic Search Coil, have been designed and constructed at Iowa, additional burnishing the college’s fame in house instrumentation.

The twin TRACERS satellites will fly one behind the opposite, 10 to 120 seconds aside, as they go by areas the place Earth’s magnetic subject opens close to the North and South poles. The satellites will measure magnetic reconnection 3,000 occasions within the first 12 months alone, which is able to assist scientists observe how shortly reconnection adjustments and evolves by evaluating information collected by every satellite tv for pc. 

Jasper Halekas is the lead scientist on the Analyzer for Cusp Electrons instrument, which is able to decide the extent of the funnel-shaped magnetospheric cusp area the place the power from the solar connects with Earth.

“Our instrument measures electrons, which are kind of like the speedsters that tell us what’s happening along the magnetic field lines,” Halekas defined. “So, when the satellites are going through the cusp, it will give us the first indication what’s going on — the tracers of TRACERS, if you will.”

Sam Hisel labored on design modifications for the ACE instrument, after beforehand serving to to design, assemble, and take a look at the circuit board for MAGIC. He mentioned he began tearing up as he watched the rocket soar right into a largely blue sky.

“This is the first rocket launch I’ve seen in person, and it was really cool,” mentioned Hisel, a Lansing, Iowa, native who graduated from Iowa in 2019 with a level in electrical engineering. “I’ve got stuff on there that I physically touched, and it’s just emotional to know it’s going to space.”

Kletzing’s spouse, Jeanette Welch, traveled from Iowa City for the launch. While she left after the primary launch window needed to be scrubbed, she beamed when requested how her late husband would react to realizing his long-held dream has sprung to life. 

“He would be totally stoked,” Welch mentioned, imagining Kletzing’s response. “The work, this mission, was so important to him. He was so happy when he won the contract, and he would be so happy with all the science that’s going to come in, because people will be using what we get for years to come.”