The mission, entitled GREECE (Ground-to-Rocket Electrodynamics-Electrons Correlative Experiment), involves launching a suborbital rocket, equipped with the Space Science Laboratory’s own particle detectors and electric field antennas, into the aurora.

The research is supported and funded by NASA and took place at the Poker Flat Research Range of University of Alaska Fairbanks. They launched a rocket that will measure the electromagnetic fields of the aurora borealis and provide insight into the physics of the swirling plasma, a space weather system that humanity has only just begun to explore. In order to better understand the sun’s interaction with the Earth’s magnetosphere, researchers at the Southwest Research Institute teamed up with John Bonnell, a Berkeley assistant research physicist and NASA team member.

Beyond the scintillating lights of the auroras borealis and australis is a complicated atomic phenomenon that Berkeley scientists are exploring by launching a rocket into the northern lights.

Flat earth society rocket