NASA’s EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) mission is set to launch in March 2025.
The mission’s trio of CubeSats will investigate intense electrical currents called electrojets that flow through Earth’s upper atmosphere when auroras (northern and southern lights) glow in the sky. Mapping the electrojets will help create better models for predicting geomagnetic storms and other space weather phenomena that can affect our technological society.
The EZIE spacecraft will lift off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California as part of the Transporter-13 rideshare mission with SpaceX via launch integrator Maverick Space Systems.
After launch, EZIE’s three small satellites will fly in a pearls-on-a-string formation, following each other as they orbit Earth from pole to pole about 350 miles (550 kilometers) overhead. Each spacecraft’s onboard sensor will look down toward the electrojets, which flow about 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the ground in an electrified layer of Earth’s atmosphere called the ionosphere.
During every orbit, each EZIE spacecraft will map the electrojets to study their structure. The three spacecraft will fly over the same region 2 to 10 minutes apart from one another, revealing how the electrojets change and helping us better understand the connection between our home planet and the Sun.
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.