Credit: Blue Canyon Technologies
On Jan. 27, the three spacecraft of NASA’s EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) mission arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, where they will undergo final preparations for launch. The EZIE mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March as part of the Transporter-13 rideshare mission with SpaceX via launch integrator Maverick Space Systems.
After lifting off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg, EZIE’s three CubeSats will fly in formation around Earth to map the auroral electrojets, electric currents that flow in the upper atmosphere near Earth’s polar regions when auroras glow in the sky.
The mission will help better understand the connection between the Sun and Earth, as well as improve predictions of hazardous space weather that can affect our technological society.
The EZIE mission is funded by the Heliophysics Division within NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, leads the mission for NASA. Blue Canyon Technologies in Boulder, Colorado, built the CubeSats, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built the Microwave Electrojet Magnetogram, which will map the electrojets, for each of the three satellites.
Read more from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.