Press Release
Set to Study Earth’s Electrojets, EZIE Satellites Arrive at Launch Site
The three EZIE spacecraft are shown at Blue Canyon Technologies in Boulder, Colorado, before their arrival at the launch site.
Credit: Blue Canyon Technologies
On Jan. 27, the three spacecraft that make up NASA’s Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) mission reached the launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, where they will undergo final preparations and integration onto the launch vehicle. EZIE is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 2025 as part of the Transporter-13 rideshare mission with SpaceX via launch integrator Maverick Space Systems.
The EZIE mission — led for NASA by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland — will take groundbreaking measurements of the auroral electrojets, which are powerful electric currents associated with the auroras that flow in the upper atmosphere near Earth’s polar regions.
EZIE features a trio of CubeSats — or small satellites — that will fly in a polar orbit and cross the auroral zones in both hemispheres. Each spacecraft will map the electrojets, advancing our understanding of the physics of Earth and how it interacts with the surrounding space. This understanding will apply not only to our own planet but to any magnetized planet in our solar system and beyond. The mission will also help scientists create models for predicting space weather to mitigate disruptive impacts on our society.
“We’re thrilled EZIE has moved one step closer to launch,” said Sam Yee, principal investigator for the EZIE mission at APL. “We look forward to the groundbreaking discoveries to come from EZIE sensing Earth’s electrojets.”
The mission team is also working on EZIE-Mag, magnetometer kits available to teachers, students and science enthusiasts who want to take their own measurements of the Earth-space electrical current system. EZIE-Mag data will be combined with EZIE measurements made from space to assemble a clear picture of this vast electrical current circuit.
The EZIE mission is funded by the Heliophysics Division within NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
APL leads the EZIE mission for NASA. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California built the Microwave Electrojet Magnetogram instrument for each of the three satellites, and Blue Canyon Technologies in Boulder, Colorado, built the CubeSats.
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