NASA is set to launch three scientific sounding rockets into the moon’s shadow during a partial solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, in an effort to investigate how the sudden drop in sunlight and temperature affects Earth’s upper atmosphere.
The project, called Atmospheric Perturbations Around The Eclipse Path (APEP), will study the changes in the ionosphere, where the air becomes electric, as the eclipse ripples through it.
The APEP mission is led by Aroh Barjatya, a professor of engineering physics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, where he directs the Space and Atmospheric Instrumentation Lab. The mission is named after the serpent deity from ancient Egyptian mythology, nemesis of the sun deity Ra.
NASA will fire 3 rockets AT the solar eclipse.
What??? 🤯https://t.co/TbKwQXGPZl pic.twitter.com/sZ6sDBFsnq
— TestDummy (@TestDummy04) March 28, 2024
The three rockets will be launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, where 81% of the sun will be blocked by the moon. The launch will take place between 14:06 and 16:33 EST, with the peak of the eclipse occurring at 15:33 EST.
Each rocket will eject four secondary instruments the size of a two-liter soda bottle that will measure changes in electric and magnetic fields, density, and temperature. This will provide data points similar to results from fifteen rockets, while only launching three.
Scientists hope to see new details of structures in the middle and lower corona and study the impact of solar radiation on Earth’s atmosphere. The observations could also help study a dust ring around the Sun and search for asteroids that orbit near the Sun.
The APEP mission was previously launched during an annular solar eclipse in October 2023 from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The team saw a sharp reduction in the density of charged particles as the annular eclipse shadow passed over the atmosphere. They plan to relaunch the rockets during the total solar eclipse in 2024 to see if the perturbations start at the same altitude and if their magnitude and scale remain the same.
