Aurora Observation Project Underway

Five satellites... one rocket. Just past 6 pm EST Saturday, NASA's THEMIS mission blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, racing into space on the flaming power of three rocket stages and nine solid rocket motor.

Once in proper orbit, the five small satellites comprising the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) project will disperse around Earth to monitor auroras like the Northern Lights.

NASA is undertaking the mission to investigate what causes auroras in the Earth's atmosphere to change in appearance and dissipate. Discovering why the light of auroras can fluctuate and fade will provide scientists with important details on how the planet's protective magnetosphere works and on the sun-Earth connection.

As Aero-News reported, NASA originally bumped the launch date to Friday, due to concerns at Kennedy Space Center about an advancing cold front and the severe storms accompanying it. The storms remained in the area throughout Friday, causing stronger-than-acceptable upper-level winds and resulting in a second 24-hour delay.

Named for the Greek goddess of justice, wisdom and good counsel, and the guardian of oaths, THEMIS is a mission to investigate what causes auroras in the Earth's atmosphere to dramatically change from slowly shimmering waves of light to wildly shifting streaks of color.

"The THEMIS mission will make a breakthrough in our understanding of how Earth's magnetosphere stores and releases energy from the sun and also will demonstrate the tremendous potential that constellation missions have for space exploration," said Vassilis Angelopoulos, THEMIS principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley. "THEMIS' unique alignments also will answer how the sun-Earth interaction is affected by Earth's bow shock, and how 'killer electrons' at Earth's radiation belts are accelerated."

NASA states discovering what causes auroras to change will provide scientists with important details on how the planet's magnetosphere works and the important Sun-Earth connection.

(Photo courtesy NASA)

FMI: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/main/index.html