1
00:00:10,593 --> 00:00:13,096
So just like when you go outside,
you want to know

2
00:00:13,096 --> 00:00:16,057
things like, is it going to be rainy
or is it going to be sunny?

3
00:00:16,057 --> 00:00:17,475
Is it going to be windy?

4
00:00:17,475 --> 00:00:19,060
When we put a satellite in orbit.

5
00:00:19,060 --> 00:00:21,604
We want to understand where it's going.

6
00:00:21,604 --> 00:00:22,731
And in space.

7
00:00:22,731 --> 00:00:26,693
Space weather is things like the radiation
or the electric field,

8
00:00:26,860 --> 00:00:29,738
the things that impact our ability
to deliver services

9
00:00:29,738 --> 00:00:32,741
from satellites in Earth orbit.

10
00:00:39,664 --> 00:00:40,331
If you've ever been

11
00:00:40,331 --> 00:00:43,460
lucky enough
to see the beautiful auroral displays,

12
00:00:43,835 --> 00:00:47,255
what you're seeing is a tremendous
input of energy

13
00:00:47,338 --> 00:00:50,800
coming from the sun being dumped
into the top of our atmosphere

14
00:00:51,134 --> 00:00:54,095
and the process that drives
that is called magnetic reconnection.

15
00:00:54,220 --> 00:00:57,432
That's the exhaust of the sun
arriving at the Earth

16
00:00:57,640 --> 00:01:01,978
and being able to couple into near
Earth space and then make its way down

17
00:01:01,978 --> 00:01:05,857
into the top of the atmosphere
to drive these beautiful auroral displays.

18
00:01:13,490 --> 00:01:14,491
So most of the

19
00:01:14,491 --> 00:01:18,203
time, the Earth's magnetic field
creates a bubble.

20
00:01:18,495 --> 00:01:21,372
And as the solar wind from the sun
hits us,

21
00:01:21,372 --> 00:01:24,375
it flows around like a rock in a stream.

22
00:01:24,375 --> 00:01:29,089
But sometimes what's coming from
the sun can interact with the Earth.

23
00:01:29,089 --> 00:01:33,843
The systems connect, and a bunch of energy
gets transferred to near Earth space.

24
00:01:34,177 --> 00:01:37,180
And that process is magnetic reconnection.

25
00:01:43,812 --> 00:01:45,188
So you can think of the magnetic

26
00:01:45,188 --> 00:01:48,233
field of the Earth as having
a bunch of layers, like an onion.

27
00:01:48,566 --> 00:01:51,611
And what magnetic reconnection does is it
lets you get your fingers

28
00:01:51,611 --> 00:01:54,739
underneath and peel off
one layer of the onion.

29
00:01:54,906 --> 00:01:59,077
And it's that peeling, open process
that gives the output of the sun,

30
00:01:59,077 --> 00:02:02,831
the solar wind, access
to one layer of near Earth space.

31
00:02:10,421 --> 00:02:11,923
So when we study things that

32
00:02:11,923 --> 00:02:14,926
are happening around the Earth,
we usually use satellites.

33
00:02:15,176 --> 00:02:19,055
And a long term problem is a satellite
comes around, makes a measurement,

34
00:02:19,055 --> 00:02:22,183
goes around the Earth again,
comes back an hour and a half later.

35
00:02:22,392 --> 00:02:25,812
And you see that things are different,
but you can't tell if that's

36
00:02:25,812 --> 00:02:29,691
because something moved, or
because something turned on or turned off.

37
00:02:30,108 --> 00:02:34,988
Tracers has two satellites
following each other at 10 to 100 and 20 seconds

38
00:02:35,280 --> 00:02:38,158
So as the two satellites
fly through the same region

39
00:02:38,158 --> 00:02:42,579
quickly, one after another,
we can pick apart what's moving around

40
00:02:42,579 --> 00:02:45,582
and what's changing in time.

41
00:02:50,295 --> 00:02:53,798
So we know that sometimes the solar wind
is connecting

42
00:02:53,798 --> 00:02:57,218
to the Earth's system, and sometimes it's
basically being stood off.

43
00:02:57,719 --> 00:02:59,345
But we don't really know.

44
00:02:59,345 --> 00:03:04,058
Does that process turn on or off quickly,
or is it mostly always connected?

45
00:03:04,058 --> 00:03:06,728
It's just that the connecting point
is moving around.

46
00:03:06,728 --> 00:03:10,398
So because tracers has two spacecraft
and they're chasing each other

47
00:03:10,481 --> 00:03:13,610
at a 10 to 120 separate second separation,

48
00:03:13,985 --> 00:03:18,323
we can use one measurement and
then another measurement to pick apart.

49
00:03:18,406 --> 00:03:20,867
Is this process turning on and turning off

50
00:03:20,867 --> 00:03:24,537
or is this process
kind of on but moving around?

51
00:03:31,794 --> 00:03:32,170
Space

52
00:03:32,170 --> 00:03:35,298
weather has direct effects
on the things that are in space,

53
00:03:35,298 --> 00:03:37,592
like if you're a satellite
orbiting the Earth

54
00:03:37,592 --> 00:03:39,636
or you're an astronaut on the space
station,

55
00:03:39,636 --> 00:03:43,223
knowing and predicting
that radiation environment is important.

56
00:03:43,640 --> 00:03:46,643
But space weather
also has effects on the ground.

57
00:03:46,809 --> 00:03:50,146
So if you get a big disturbance
in the Earth's magnetic field,

58
00:03:50,230 --> 00:03:53,358
you can actually drive large currents
through things

59
00:03:53,358 --> 00:03:56,361
like the power distribution
grid on the ground.

60
00:03:56,611 --> 00:03:59,822
And historically,
big events have done things like disrupt

61
00:04:00,073 --> 00:04:03,159
or even in some case
caused blackouts in the electrical grid.

62
00:04:09,999 --> 00:04:11,709
So if you'd like to learn more,

63
00:04:11,709 --> 00:04:15,004
the NASA maintains a blog for the TRACERS
mission,

64
00:04:15,171 --> 00:04:18,341
and the University of Iowa TRACERS
website has a bunch of information

65
00:04:18,466 --> 00:04:21,803
on the satellites, the instruments, and
what we're really trying to accomplish.

66
00:04:28,268 --> 00:04:29,769
NASA is putting together a

67
00:04:29,769 --> 00:04:33,648
fleet of missions to understand
how the sun affects the Earth.

68
00:04:33,982 --> 00:04:37,360
The recently launched PUNCH
mission is imaging the sun

69
00:04:37,527 --> 00:04:41,406
to see what it's creating and how that
material comes towards the Earth.

70
00:04:41,739 --> 00:04:45,201
The recently launched
EZIE is studying the effects

71
00:04:45,201 --> 00:04:48,204
and what that creates
in the top of the Earth's atmosphere.

72
00:04:48,371 --> 00:04:50,999
TRACERS is in the middle,
and it's studying how

73
00:04:50,999 --> 00:04:54,252
the sun system
and the Earth system coupled together.

74
00:04:54,252 --> 00:04:57,255
So how one connects to the other.

75
00:05:02,677 --> 00:05:05,680
TRACERS
isn't a space weather forecasting mission.

76
00:05:05,680 --> 00:05:09,726
What TRACERS is going to do is help
us understand the underlying physics,

77
00:05:10,059 --> 00:05:14,188
how what the sun is doing
connects and varies in time

78
00:05:14,188 --> 00:05:19,569
and place to the Earth system, allowing us
to build these forecasts in the future.

79
00:05:26,451 --> 00:05:28,494
I train doing suborbital rockets.

80
00:05:28,494 --> 00:05:30,913
So that's an experiment
that you launch on a rocket.

81
00:05:30,913 --> 00:05:32,874
It goes up, it comes down.

82
00:05:32,874 --> 00:05:35,335
It never achieves full orbit.

83
00:05:35,335 --> 00:05:37,211
They're a great research platform.

84
00:05:37,211 --> 00:05:40,590
But you launch the rocket,
you get about four minutes of data,

85
00:05:40,590 --> 00:05:44,427
and then you spend the next year trying
to pick apart all the intricate details

86
00:05:44,427 --> 00:05:45,636
of what's happening.

87
00:05:45,636 --> 00:05:51,142
TRACERS is going to get us 3000 rocket
shots in one year of operation,

88
00:05:51,309 --> 00:05:54,729
and that's a cornucopia of data
to help us understand

89
00:05:54,729 --> 00:05:58,024
not just what's happening in one place
at one time,

90
00:05:58,066 --> 00:06:02,278
but to give us a whole picture of
what's happening in the Earth-sun system.