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Launching to Study Pulsating Aurora

A long exposure photograph of a rocket launching into the sky. Long white streak from bottom left to top right, black sky and faint green aurora.
The LAMP mission hopes to understand an often overlooked kind of aurora, called a pulsating aurora, and to test a theory on what causes them.

The LAMP mission, short for Loss through Auroral Microburst Pulsations, launched on Saturday, Marc 5, 2022, aboard a Black Brant IX suborbital sounding rocket. The mission will study an often overlooked kind of aurora, called a pulsating aurora, and test a theory on what causes them.

Like all aurora, a pulsating aurora is set alight by electrons (and occasionally protons) from near-Earth space. These electrons plunge into our atmosphere and collide with atoms and molecules, causing them to glow in their distinctive colors – red and green by oxygen, blue by nitrogen – as they release their excess energy.

Image Credit: NASA