WEBVTT FILE 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.