A new NASA mission will make it a lot easier to predict space weather

We're in solar storm season. That's because 2025 is the peak of the sun's 11-year cycle of activity. Electrically charged particles fly from our neighborhood star into Earth's magnetosphere, where a powerful magnetic field surrounds our planet. From there, many things can happen – auroras, and even electrical shorts in satellites or power lines.

How does that powerful solar energy get transmitted to Earth? A new NASA satellite series called the Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) aims to fill in the gap. EZIE's three toaster-sized CubeSat satellites will spend at least 18 months circling our planet and watching how "space weather" operates near our planet — and how it can impact our infrastructure.

"Satellites, power lines, that kind of thing can be affected" by solar storms, said principal investigator Sam Yee, a space scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. That's because the current of energy from the solar wind flowing through our atmosphere creates plasma through ionizations and heat through resistance, he added. "We call it a space weather event when the current gets stronger abruptly."

Mighty currents have caused disruptions before. In 1989, solar storms shorted power for six million people in Quebec. Further back, an immense 1859 storm known as the Carrington Event set afire recording tape at telegraph stations. Scientists have warned that if another Carrington happens, we would be even more vulnerable today given how much of our lives depend on the electrical grid.

EZIE will zero in on Earth's auroral electrojets — which are electrical currents flowing close to the magnetic poles of our planet. At the edge of space, which is roughly 65 miles or 100 km above our planet, these electrojets carry currents of up to a million amps of electricity.

"You often see this on the night side of the earth — a big burst of activity," said Ian Mann, a University of Alberta physicist not involved with the mission. This activity results in "big dancing displays of the Northern Lights and large electrical currents, and that can happen very quickly. And if it happens quickly, that means that the magnetic fields change quickly."

The magnetic fields can be measured through the Zeeman effect of radiative emissions of atoms and molecules. These emission lines can split into several components in the presence of a magnetic field, caused by the interaction between the internal magnetic moments of the emitting atoms and molecules with the external magnetic field. We can see these splits in the spectrum of light emitted by these atoms and molecules.

EZIE's Three Satellites. (NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)

EZIE aims to use its trio of satellites to remotely quantify the Zeeman effects of the molecular oxygen emission line. It will measure magnetic fields induced by the presence of the electrical current in the upper atmosphere in different locations, especially during space weather events. In other words, EZIE will generate a "current map" – a map of the structure of the current – in the field of view of the satellites, Yee said. More importantly: "If we put a multiple spacecraft flying over that region at the same time, we can see that structure, [and] how a structure changes with time."

While we can infer the currents from the ground, the distance away from the Earth where the currents flow means that mapping their detailed structure that way is challenging. The University of Alberta, for example, manages and operates the CARISMA magnetometer network. The acronym stands for Canadian Array for Realtime Investigations of Magnetic Activity, part of a multi-university project called Space Environment Canada, funded by the Canadian Space Agency, with additional support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

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The vast CARISMA magnetometer array runs thousands of miles from Canada's north to close to the border of the United States, and from east to west, spanning a large region of western Canada. Despite this coverage of sensors measuring the magnetic field, "diagnosing the detailed fine structure is a nightmare," Mann said, since the magnetic effects from smaller scale structures can magnetically cancel on the ground.

Such features can then fall below the resolution of the network, meaning they will smear out in the data. And from above, "you only typically have an occasional satellite that flies through it." Mann said the ideal would be "to have a huge network of satellites all flying at the same time, and by mapping their magnetic fields locally such a constellation of satellites could tell you something about what's actually happening" as the space storms develop.

Besides EZIE, he said the community has been fortunate to get some information from the AMPERE experiments aboard the Iridium satellite network. The resolution of AMPERE (Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment) is much lower, however.

"The resolution in space and time is still determined by the pass-through time of the spacecraft," Mann said. "The satellites in the AMPERE constellation are about 10 minutes apart along their orbits, and a lot can happen in 10 minutes."

During EZIE overflights of the electrojets, the three EZIE satellites will assess the spatial and temporal development of the magnetic fields — which are the signatures of the electrojets. EZIE data will therefore help scientists to better understand how space storms develop, and how sothey can adversely impact technological infrastructure on the ground and in space.

Solar storms create beautiful displays when they generate auroras, but the stakes are more serious when they affect power grids or satellites. EZIE aims to help us better understand the flow of currents, to protect our infrastructure. That way, we can both enjoy the beautiful northern lights – and rest easy knowing the lights will still be on when we go back inside.