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On April 8, the moon will glide completely in front of the sun, plunging parts of the United States, Canada, and Mexico into darkness. total solar eclipse. It’s not just the millions of eager spectators who are excited. NASA engineers in Virginia plan to make the most of those precious few minutes of darkness by firing a rocket directly into the eclipse’s shadow.
In addition to the obvious cool factor, the launch has an important scientific goal. It’s about helping scientists understand how a sudden drop in sunlight affects Earth’s air layers.
A sudden change from day to night is known to cause a sudden drop in temperature. Trick animals into nocturnal behavior. But scientists are wondering how a moment of darkness might affect the boundary between Earth’s upper and lower atmospheres, called the ionosphere, which extends 55 to 310 miles (90 to 500 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface. I hardly understand it.
Here, ultraviolet light from the sun routinely strips electrons from atoms, forming massive amounts of charged particles that swell the upper atmosphere. As these ions recombine with neutral atoms, they become thinner at sunset, only to be stripped away again at dawn the next day.
Related: 4 ways you can help NASA study the April 8 solar eclipse
“If you think of the ionosphere as a pond with gentle ripples, a solar eclipse is like a motorboat suddenly breaking through the water.” Arrow BarjatiyaAs Professor of Engineering and Physics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University wrote in a paper: NASA Articles in 2023. “It creates a wake just below and behind it, and then there’s a momentary rise in water level as it hurtles back down.”
So NASA engineers decided to launch three rockets on April 8, before, during, and after the Moon’s shadow turned daylight, which is known to interfere with both radio and satellite communications. We hope to collect enough data to predict such disturbances.
So Barjatia and his team will launch three rockets from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. Although the moon only blocks 81.4% of the sun’s light at the facility, the researchers hope to use the temporary dimming to understand how widespread the “wake” caused by the moon is. thinking. solar eclipse teeth.
same team of engineers I did a similar experiment During part of October last year “Ring of Fire” solar eclipse, when up to 90% of the sun’s light is blocked by the moon. The results of these launches reveal that low sunlight causes perturbations that can affect wireless and satellite communications, highlighting the need for improved ability to predict them. Ta.
“I’m very excited to start again. [the rockets] “To check whether the perturbation starts at the same altitude and whether its size and magnitude remain the same during a total solar eclipse,” Barjatya concluded. NASA statement.
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