At 11:43 p.m. PDT on March 14, 2025, NASA’s EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) mission lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
At approximately 2 a.m. PDT on March 15, the EZIE satellites were successfully deployed. Within the next 10 days, the spacecraft will send signals to the ground to verify they are in good health and operating normally.
The trio of satellites will orbit approximately 260 to 370 miles (420 to 590 kilometers) above Earth’s surface to map and study changes in the auroral electrojets, powerful electric currents that flow through our upper atmosphere in the polar regions where auroras glow in the sky. The EZIE mission will help scientists improve models for predicting space weather to mitigate its disruptive impacts on our 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.