1 00:00:10,218 --> 00:00:10,635 All right. 2 00:00:10,635 --> 00:00:13,138 Space weather is similar to terrestrial weather. 3 00:00:13,138 --> 00:00:15,015 Think of space as not being empty. 4 00:00:15,015 --> 00:00:18,727 We have winds that consist of charged particles that flow from the sun. 5 00:00:19,060 --> 00:00:20,729 We have hurricanes. 6 00:00:20,729 --> 00:00:23,773 We call them space storms, or coronal mass ejections 7 00:00:23,773 --> 00:00:26,776 that come from the sun and move towards us. 8 00:00:27,318 --> 00:00:30,321 We have temperature that charged particles can be 9 00:00:30,321 --> 00:00:33,908 a very high energy and can be very hot, in other words. 10 00:00:34,117 --> 00:00:37,537 And the hotter they are, the bigger the effects that they have on, on 11 00:00:37,537 --> 00:00:40,665 on the environment and especially when they get into the Earth's system. 12 00:00:40,957 --> 00:00:43,626 So space weather is the study of exactly the same thing 13 00:00:43,626 --> 00:00:47,630 we do terrestrially to understand how these things change from the sun. 14 00:00:47,922 --> 00:00:49,507 And when they get to the Earth, 15 00:00:49,507 --> 00:00:52,510 the downstream effects that this has on our Earth's system, 16 00:00:52,510 --> 00:00:55,597 the magnetosphere and everything that's contained in it, the spacecraft, 17 00:00:55,597 --> 00:00:57,640 and ultimately all the way down to the ground. 18 00:01:03,646 --> 00:01:04,814 What TRACERS helps you to 19 00:01:04,814 --> 00:01:07,901 understand is what makes a storm big in the way it affects us 20 00:01:07,901 --> 00:01:08,818 here at Earth. 21 00:01:08,818 --> 00:01:12,280 The energy flow or the energy that's contained in the charged particles 22 00:01:12,280 --> 00:01:13,156 from the sun 23 00:01:13,156 --> 00:01:16,743 and carries with it, and a magnetic field when that interacts with the Earth. 24 00:01:16,743 --> 00:01:20,497 It's a complex interactions, and sometimes a lot of energy gets transferred. 25 00:01:20,497 --> 00:01:22,665 Sometimes little energy gets transferred. 26 00:01:22,665 --> 00:01:25,627 TRACERS sits at an altitude in the polar cusp, 27 00:01:25,835 --> 00:01:28,213 which has a direct entry into the solar wind. 28 00:01:28,213 --> 00:01:31,049 So it's like a mirror of what happens out far in space. 29 00:01:31,049 --> 00:01:34,844 So you can measure down below all the varying conditions that lead 30 00:01:34,844 --> 00:01:38,098 to something being a really big storm or a very small storm. 31 00:01:38,139 --> 00:01:39,849 And this is still something we do not know. 32 00:01:39,849 --> 00:01:42,852 And in terms of predictions, is something we have to know if we want to 33 00:01:42,852 --> 00:01:43,603 get better at it. 34 00:01:49,234 --> 00:01:51,986 You know, the solar wind we mentioned that before 35 00:01:51,986 --> 00:01:55,782 is carried from the sun and it has embedded magnetic fields. 36 00:01:55,782 --> 00:01:57,826 And these magnetic field have directions 37 00:01:57,826 --> 00:02:00,245 that can be either northwards or southwards. 38 00:02:00,245 --> 00:02:02,080 And the Earth's magnetic field is fixed. 39 00:02:02,080 --> 00:02:04,415 It's controlled by the Earth's core. 40 00:02:04,415 --> 00:02:06,417 And it has always a fixed direction. 41 00:02:06,417 --> 00:02:09,045 And when these fields are in the same direction, not much happens. 42 00:02:09,045 --> 00:02:12,549 You know, it's like it's like two spouts of water going in the same direction. 43 00:02:12,549 --> 00:02:14,217 There's not much action going on, 44 00:02:14,217 --> 00:02:16,719 but when they are in opposite directions and meet. 45 00:02:16,719 --> 00:02:20,974 And if you think about two water spouts being pointed each other where they meet, 46 00:02:21,516 --> 00:02:24,352 particles get redirected in all sorts of directions. 47 00:02:24,352 --> 00:02:27,355 And that's kind of what we talk about magnetic reconnection, 48 00:02:27,397 --> 00:02:32,277 where these field lines can reconnect and the particles that are tied to them 49 00:02:32,277 --> 00:02:32,861 can enter 50 00:02:32,861 --> 00:02:37,323 the Earth's system can go all the way down to the atmosphere where you have aurora 51 00:02:37,323 --> 00:02:39,826 that can cause large currents that give you all the other 52 00:02:39,826 --> 00:02:42,370 geomagnetic effects that we talked about before. 53 00:02:48,585 --> 00:02:49,210 Well, the 54 00:02:49,210 --> 00:02:52,422 overarching question in understanding how much energy 55 00:02:52,422 --> 00:02:56,384 is transferred into the Earth's system is to understand over 56 00:02:56,384 --> 00:02:59,470 what area does this happen and how does it happen in time? 57 00:02:59,470 --> 00:03:02,348 Does it happen a little bit here, a little bit over there? 58 00:03:02,348 --> 00:03:06,019 Does it happen all over the front side of the magnetosphere and TRACERS 59 00:03:06,019 --> 00:03:10,440 cutting through in the Earth’s cusp down low is ideally positioned to see that. 60 00:03:10,815 --> 00:03:12,358 And the two spacecrafts are needed. 61 00:03:12,358 --> 00:03:15,403 Well think about it in terms of two boats in an ocean. 62 00:03:15,403 --> 00:03:17,655 When the two boats go up together, 63 00:03:17,655 --> 00:03:19,991 you know, you know that the whole ocean is going up. 64 00:03:19,991 --> 00:03:21,743 If one goes up, then the other goes up. 65 00:03:21,743 --> 00:03:24,370 You know, you might be seeing a wave that goes past you, 66 00:03:24,370 --> 00:03:29,500 and that's sort of a change in space and a change in time that we can disentangle. 67 00:03:29,500 --> 00:03:33,296 And that gives you the evidence to understand how well reconnection work, 68 00:03:33,546 --> 00:03:36,507 how well is the energy being transferred into our system. 69 00:03:36,507 --> 00:03:40,470 And thus we need to understand these details in order to make better predictions. 70 00:03:47,435 --> 00:03:47,769 Right. 71 00:03:47,769 --> 00:03:49,896 I mean, you have to space weather here at Earth. 72 00:03:49,896 --> 00:03:51,105 At Earth, we are lucky. 73 00:03:51,105 --> 00:03:54,150 We've got the magnetosphere, which is like a shield that shields us 74 00:03:54,150 --> 00:03:57,612 from the sun and the harmful radiation in most parts. 75 00:03:57,820 --> 00:04:00,531 Not in the cusp, of course, that's why we're there.. 76 00:04:00,531 --> 00:04:02,533 But also at the moon, at Mars, where people are trying 77 00:04:02,533 --> 00:04:05,620 to go to understanding how the sun operates is important. 78 00:04:05,828 --> 00:04:08,164 Reconnection is the process that happens at the sun 79 00:04:08,164 --> 00:04:10,166 that actually leads to these large eruptions. 80 00:04:10,166 --> 00:04:12,001 But here at Earth, it's one of the few places 81 00:04:12,001 --> 00:04:14,337 we can actually study it at our own planet. 82 00:04:14,337 --> 00:04:17,340 We can actually get to it and measure it. 83 00:04:21,761 --> 00:04:22,345 Space weather 84 00:04:22,345 --> 00:04:26,015 affects everything around us, but of course, in particular 85 00:04:26,349 --> 00:04:31,229 the assets that we have out in space. Just like terrestrial weather protects - 86 00:04:31,229 --> 00:04:31,813 we need to know 87 00:04:31,813 --> 00:04:34,941 when storms are to protect ships on sea, to protect infrastructure, 88 00:04:35,233 --> 00:04:37,151 we need to protect our infrastructure in space 89 00:04:37,151 --> 00:04:37,986 in a similar way. 90 00:04:43,992 --> 00:04:45,451 There are several sites available. 91 00:04:45,451 --> 00:04:49,372 There's NASA dot gov slash TRACERS [nasa.gov/tracers] backup traces and NASA solar system [@NASASolarSystem] on various 92 00:04:49,372 --> 00:04:52,375 social media accounts. 93 00:04:57,380 --> 00:05:00,508 On satellites in particular, you have, effects 94 00:05:00,675 --> 00:05:04,095 of surface charging, which can give you discharges on the spacecraft. 95 00:05:04,387 --> 00:05:07,348 You've got the high energy particles getting right into the electronics, 96 00:05:07,348 --> 00:05:10,351 giving you upsets in the computer, and then you got the 97 00:05:10,685 --> 00:05:14,522 the overall dose of radiation, which eventually can kill a satellite 98 00:05:14,522 --> 00:05:17,525 and limit the lifetime of the satellite. 99 00:05:22,572 --> 00:05:25,491 Well, for me, it's, it's the culmination of having worked 100 00:05:25,491 --> 00:05:28,494 with these guys for a very long time and getting to know the team. 101 00:05:29,787 --> 00:05:30,246 It's. 102 00:05:30,246 --> 00:05:32,623 And a lot of them out to my colleagues. 103 00:05:32,623 --> 00:05:35,126 But from a science point of view, it's it's very exciting to see 104 00:05:35,126 --> 00:05:38,796 the next step going forward and being able to do these kinds of measurements 105 00:05:39,130 --> 00:05:41,799 at the, at the cusps in the low Earth orbit. 106 00:05:41,799 --> 00:05:45,511 We've had glimpses of the dynamics there from rocket flights in the past. 107 00:05:45,803 --> 00:05:49,474 But to really understand, you know, you can't send up 3000 rockets. 108 00:05:49,474 --> 00:05:52,268 TRACERS can go up and do these measurements repeatedly. 109 00:05:52,268 --> 00:05:53,019 We're going to collect 110 00:05:53,019 --> 00:05:57,023 about 3000 crossings of the cusp region throughout the TRACERS mission. 111 00:05:57,190 --> 00:06:00,610 That gives us enough events and enough statistics to really untangle 112 00:06:00,777 --> 00:06:04,447 when and how the solar wind couples in, and when 113 00:06:04,447 --> 00:06:08,326 and how reconnection is really working well and when it does not work well. 114 00:06:08,493 --> 00:06:11,371 And again, those are the basic physics of the reconnections 115 00:06:11,371 --> 00:06:14,999 that will also help us understand how it works on the sun and by extension, 116 00:06:15,416 --> 00:06:18,252 in the broader heliosphere and also the broader universe. 117 00:06:25,843 --> 00:06:27,970 We have a range of other missions that are going out 118 00:06:27,970 --> 00:06:31,432 there, that are also been around for a long, long time. 119 00:06:31,766 --> 00:06:34,435 EZIE and PUNCH have just launched, 120 00:06:34,435 --> 00:06:38,189 they look at the sun through images, you know, remotely, but 121 00:06:38,189 --> 00:06:42,485 you cannot do in images measuring things that actually happen locally at the sun. 122 00:06:42,777 --> 00:06:45,988 And and TRACERS again is the one mission that allows us 123 00:06:45,988 --> 00:06:49,283 to study these processes in situ where we can get at them. 124 00:06:49,450 --> 00:06:53,413 So it complements all the other science and putting all these bits and pieces 125 00:06:53,413 --> 00:06:55,289 together, observing the sun. 126 00:06:55,289 --> 00:06:59,293 But the images doing some of the measurements on the, on the reconnection, 127 00:07:00,336 --> 00:07:03,423 you know, it kind of fills out the full picture of how our sun 128 00:07:03,423 --> 00:07:07,176 interacts with the planetary system and us here on Earth in particular. 129 00:07:14,559 --> 00:07:14,934 Right. 130 00:07:14,934 --> 00:07:18,104 In the past, we've gotten snapshots of what happens at reconnection 131 00:07:18,104 --> 00:07:21,941 at the front side of the Earth by a rocket flying through the cusp region 132 00:07:22,275 --> 00:07:24,569 TRACERS is the first mission that not only flies 133 00:07:24,569 --> 00:07:27,822 through this region repeatedly, but does so with two spacecraft. 134 00:07:27,822 --> 00:07:31,117 So we can really understand the details of, time and, 135 00:07:31,576 --> 00:07:34,996 and space where these, reconnection happens up front. 136 00:07:35,288 --> 00:07:36,247 And that is critical 137 00:07:36,247 --> 00:07:39,667 for us to understand the process to the point of predictability. 138 00:07:39,834 --> 00:07:43,880 And going forward, the data from the TRACERS cusp crossing, we expect 139 00:07:43,880 --> 00:07:48,551 over 3000 of them will help us to build better predictive models for the Earth.