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Audience reacts as University of Iowa’s NASA mission takes off
People collect in Van Allen Hall to look at the University of Iowa’s NASA mission, TRACERS, launch into orbit on Wednesday, July 23, 2025.
- The University of Iowa’s TRACERS mission efficiently launched, learning the interplay between Earth’s magnetic area and photo voltaic wind.
- The twin satellites will observe magnetic reconnection, which might disrupt know-how and create auroras.
- This mission is the biggest externally funded analysis challenge in University of Iowa historical past, initially led by the late Craig Kletzing.
With all programs good and favorable climate, the University of Iowa’s NASA mission, TRACERS, efficiently launched into orbit, marking a major milestone in area physics.
The TRACERS mission (Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites) is a part of NASA’s Explorers Program, led by David Miles at the University of Iowa. It formally launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday, July 23.
The mission, initially scheduled to launch on Tuesday, July 22, was delayed resulting from an surprising plane within the airspace.
The twin satellites will research how Earth responds to photo voltaic wind and the way vitality from the solar breaks by way of Earth’s magnetic protect throughout magnetic reconnection. During magnetic reconnection, the photo voltaic wind can disrupt satellites, GPS indicators, and different applied sciences, and even set off auroras within the northern hemisphere.
The mission will observe the place magnetic reconnection occurs, serving to scientists higher perceive area climate and its impression on Earth.
“Space weather has direct effects on the things that are in space, like if you’re a satellite orbiting the Earth, or you’re an astronaut on the space station,” Miles said in a University of Iowa video. “Knowing and predicting the radiation environment is important, but space weather also has effects on the ground.”
TRACERS: University of Iowa’s largest externally funded analysis challenge
The TRACERS mission is the biggest externally funded research project within the University of Iowa’s historical past.
The challenge initially started with the late Craig Kletzing, who died in August 2023. In 2019, the professor and researcher gained $115 million from NASA to review the interactions between the solar’s and Earth’s magnetic fields.
Other main UI grants embrace $88.5 million to Francois Abboud in 1971 for illness analysis and $75.4 million to Thomas Scholz in 1998 to fund the Child Health Specialty Clinics.
“The TRACERS research addresses long-standing questions about how energy couples from the solar wind into our local magnetosphere,” Kletzing said in a news release from 2019. “One of the long-term goals of our space research is to evolve toward predictive ‘space weather’ models to improve our ability to utilize space as a resource. The science that TRACERS studies will be essential to achieve this goal.”
TRACERS will take snapshots of exercise as they go by way of polar cusps, the place photo voltaic climate streams into Earth’s higher ambiance, inflicting phenomena such because the aurora borealis. The launch comes at an opportune time, as photo voltaic exercise has been a lot stronger than beforehand predicted. As a end result, the aurora borealis might be seen throughout components of the United States, including Iowa.
“If you’ve ever been lucky enough to see the beautiful auroral displays, what you’re seeing is a tremendous input of energy coming from the sun being dumped into the top of our atmosphere,” Miles stated in a video from NASA. “That is called magnetic reconnection. That’s the exhaust of the sun arriving at the Earth and being able to couple into near Earth space and then make its way down into the top of the atmosphere to drive these beautiful auroral displays.”
Spirits excessive, and TRACERS in orbit
On the preliminary launch date, Tuesday, July 22, greater than 50 folks got here to Van Allen Hall to look at the launch, which was promptly rescheduled for the next day, leading to a doubling of attendance and excessive spirits.
Attendees have been inspired to signal a cardboard model of the TRACERS mission, which Olivia Jones had donned, for good luck. The room full of chatter and dialog earlier than the launch, and moments of silence adopted, earlier than erupting into cheers. The countdown started, and because the Falcon 9 took off, the viewers watched intensely as mission management supplied updates from the mission.
But what occurs subsequent?
“We’re not going to be able to hear from the instruments themselves. None of the science instruments are going to turn on today; that’s a process that takes weeks to complete,” stated affiliate professor Allison Jaynes. “Over the coming days and weeks, we’ll hear more about how those are operating and what kind of data we’re getting back to Earth. So it’s going to be a long timeline.”
TRACERS, whereas in orbit, will decide the impression of photo voltaic wind circumstances, measure the reconnection charge and observe the way it evolves, and acquire a greater understanding of the connection between magnetic reconnection and the circumstances within the polar cusps that allow it to happen.
“Energy from solar wind gets in, and when it gets in, it causes all kinds of things to happen, and we consider that to be space weather,” Jaynes stated. “(Space weather) affects our technology. It affects things in our atmosphere and even affects our climate. The measurements that TRACERS take will give us unprecedented views into how the energy enters the oceanic field, where it occurs, how often it occurs, and what fraction of that energy comes in.”
The TRACERS aren’t the one spacecraft learning the how the solar impacts the Earth. Two different just lately launched NASA missions, Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) and the Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE), are additionally gathering knowledge. All the missions are working collectively.
“The recently launched PUNCH mission is imaging the sun to see what it’s creating and how that material comes towards the Earth. The recently launched EZIE mission is studying the effects and what that creates in the top of the Earth’s atmosphere,” Miles stated in a video from NASA. “TRACERS is in the middle, and it’s studying how the sun system and the Earth system couple together, so how one connects to the other.”
Both NASA and the University of Iowa will proceed to replace discoveries and data from the TRACERS mission online whereas the dual spacecrafts are in orbit.
Jessica Rish is an leisure, eating and schooling reporter for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. She will be reached at [email protected] or on X, previously generally known as Twitter, @rishjessica_
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