PHOTO OF THE DAY: NASA Captures Pulsating Aurora During ‘LAMP’ Mission Launch

By  //  March 8, 2022

NASA & SPACE NEWS

The LAMP mission, short for Loss through Auroral Microburst Pulsations, launched on Saturday, March 5, 2022, aboard a Black Brant IX suborbital-sounding rocket. (NASA image)

(NASA) – The LAMP mission, short for Loss through Auroral Microburst Pulsations, launched on Saturday, March 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.

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