NASA to Launch Magnetic Storm Probes 51
eldavojohn writes "The aurora borealis (also known as the Northern Lights) has long been known to be an effect resulting from the Sun's solar wind pushing particles into the earth's magnetic field and atmosphere. In light of the possible danger that these substorms could pose to astronauts & equipment, NASA is now planning a mission to track down these magnetic storms and disturbances. The program's not so catchy name of Time History of Events and Macroscale Interaction during Substorms has a slightly catchier acronym of THEMIS. From the article, "In order to scan the Earth's magnetic field and pinpoint the origin of substorms, THEMIS researchers plan to stagger their spacecraft in different orbits that range in altitude from 10 to 30 times the radius of the Earth (the planet's radius is about 3,962 miles, or 6,378 kilometers).""
Not to be confused with the Other THEMIS (Score:2, Informative)
http://themis.la.asu.edu/ [asu.edu]
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
The Story of the Aurora and Electricity in Space (Score:2, Informative)
Birkeland's paper on the aurora, based in part on his brave journey to Northern Norway through 24-hour darkness and temperatures low enough that he nearly died on the trip, marked the first time that anybody (specifically British scientists) decided to start ostracizing the concept of electricity in space. Their legacy of ridiculing electricity in space would continue on for generations to the present day.
The story of the rejection of electricity in space sounds strikingly similar to the situation that persists today when electricity is implicated in anything that has to do with our space observations. From Don Scott's The Electric Sky:
Hannes Alfven also tried to convince Chapman of Birkeland's reasoning about the aurora:
Few people that ridicule Electric Universe Theory and Plasma Cosmology today realize that they follow in the footsteps of the confident Sydney Chapman. After all, how would they know about the story? Few people today, including NASA's discussion of this probe on their website, link the name Kristian Birkeland to the aurora.