NASA saw the Northern Lights and seized their chance in the wee hours of Thursday morning, launching three science rockets into active auroras within a couple hours of one another.

Kristina Lynch, principal investigator on the mission, said, The visible light produced in the atmosphere as aurora is the last step of a chain of processes connecting the solar wind to the atmosphere. We are seeking to understand what structure in these visible signatures can tell us about the electrodynamics of processes higher up.

The instruments flew on Black IX sounding rockets, launched from the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska. The third rocket was part of the Ionospheric Structuring: In Situ and Groundbased Low Altitude StudieS, or ISINGLASS, mission. ISINGLASS. Because we have to give something a head-scratching acronym, or else it wouldnt really be NASA, now would it?

SpaceX is either broke enough, or stoked enough on their fleet, that theyve accepted a significant deposit from two people naturally, two unnamed people toward a moon mission in 2018. The as-yet-anonymous astronauts will be in the Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon Heavy rocket, launching from Pad 39A. In SpaceXs words: This presents an opportunity for humans to return to deep space for the first time in 45 years and they will travel faster and further into the Solar System than any before them.

In the official teaser, SpaceX tips a hat to NASA, whose Commercial Crew Program enabled SpaceX to develop the Dragon 2 in the first place. Maybe Im a terrible person for routinely picking on flat earthers, but this makes me want to crowdfund tickets for these people.

Saturn and Enceladus, with bonus cryovolcano. Inset: Enceladus, zoomed way in. Image and inset: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ted Stryk

A scientist sifting through old Voyager 1 data found this long-ignored image of Saturn that came with a prize. Enceladus is visible in the background, in its waxing crescent phase; near its bottom, theres a visible plume coming from the surface. Turns out this was a snapshot of a cryovolcano in mid-eruption, taken by Voyager 1 a day after its closest approach to Saturn. After going through the raw data with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, amateur image processor Ted Stryk is ready to present his work to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. After combining different [raw data] subsets as well as the full set, Stryk said, I am confident in the detection of the plumes, just where they should be.

Sometimes when Im annoyed, I threaten to fire the object of my annoyance into the sun. NASA is taking this idea more literally. They are sending a spacecraft to the sun, in order to figure out some longstanding scientific questions.

Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins

Scientists are conducting the Solar Probe Plus mission to figure out what gives the solar wind its speed, why the surface of the sun is so much cooler than its atmosphere, and perhaps even what causes the emission of solar energetic particles. On its last few close passes to the sun, Solar Probe+ will get within about 3.7 million miles of the sun about a tenth the distance between the sun and Mercury. Theyre planning to keep the science payload cool with a 4.5-inch-thick carbon composite heat shield.

One last thought: This anticipated finer understanding of the Sun represents a baby step toward becoming a Kardashev Type II civilization, capable of harnessing the entire energy output of our parent star.

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SpaceX, NASA, and the Northern Lights: this week in space - ExtremeTech