NASA Endurance mission discovers a Long-Sought Global Electric Field on Earth

Using observations from a NASA suborbital rocket, an international team of scientists has, for the first time, successfully measured a planet-wide electric field thought to be as fundamental to Earth as its gravity and magnetic fields. Known as the ambipolar electric field, scientists first hypothesized over 60 years ago that it drove how our planet’s atmosphere can escape above Earth’s North and South Poles. Measurements from the rocket, NASA’s Endurance mission, have confirmed the existence of the ambipolar field and quantified its strength, revealing its role in driving atmospheric escape and shaping our ionosphere — a layer of the upper atmosphere — more broadly.

Understanding the complex movements — as well as evolution — of our planet’s atmosphere provides clues not only to the history of Earth but also gives us insight into the mysteries of other planets and determining which ones might be hospitable to life. The paper was published today in the journal Nature.

Endurance was a NASA-funded mission conducted through the Sounding Rocket Program at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The sounding rocket was launched at the Svalbard Rocket Range in Ny-Ålesund, owned and operated by Andøya Space.

EISCAT Svalbard Radar, located in Longyearbyen, made ground-based measurements of the ionosphere critical to interpreting the rocket data. The United Kingdom Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Research Council of Norway (RCN) funded the EISCAT radar for the Endurance mission.

Watch the scientists explain the mission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCM1MaYC5lM

The full paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07480-3