The Endurance mission rocket will be launched across the Earth's magnetic north pole on May 9 from the northernmost test site on
Once airborne, the Endurance mission willmeasure the number of electrons leaving the Earth's atmosphere. This is a constant process that lasts for billions of years, the participants in the experiment say. The electrons leave the Earth at a certain, predictable rate, but they must be slowed down a bit by the Earth's global electric field. The mission instruments will try to measure this slowdown effect to find out how strong it is.
The researchers note that the Earth's electrical potential is so weak that all previous attempts to measure it have failed.
“We had to invent a completely newtechnology to do it on Earth, using a technique that we first used on Venus,” says Glyn Collinson, researcher at NASA's Space Flight Center and leader of the experiment.
Photo: NASA Wallops/Brian Bonsteel
Researchers believe that it is precisely such a weakthe electric field made possible the existence of life on Earth, creating conditions for the preservation of the aquatic environment. As NASA notes, a billion years ago, Venus also had oceans, but since then the water has virtually disappeared from the surface of the planet.
In 2016, the Venus Express mission discoveredon the planet, an electrical potential of 10 V surrounding the planet. As scientists believe, because of this, positively charged particles come off the surface of Venus. It was this electrical potential that threw positively charged oxygen into space, which was separated from hydrogen atoms by intense sunlight.
“We think one of the reasons the Earth might be habitable is because we have a very weak electrical potential,” Collinson adds.
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