Gerrard Kaonga
NASA has somehow made the nighttime phenomenon of an aurora borealis even more beautiful.
Launching a rocket into space during the glorious light show has perfectly captured man’s obsession with the sky and the stars beyond.
A clip of the rocket launch has since gone viral on TikTok.
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The clip posted by Sky News has so far been viewed more than 500,000 times.
“A sounding rocket launched from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, Nov. 8, 2023, carrying NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s DISSIPATION mission,” NASA explained of the rocket launch.
“The rocket launched into aurora and successfully captured data to understand how auroras heat the atmosphere and cause high-altitude winds.
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“The teams continue to support a second sounding rocket launch for BEAM-PIE, a mission for Los Alamos National Laboratory that will use an electron beam to create radio waves, measuring how atmospheric conditions modulate them. The data is key to interpreting measurements from many other missions.”
The viral video shows the beautiful green hue of the aurora borealis interrupted by the rocket launch which brightens the night sky.
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The enthusiasts who camped out to follow the launch stood in awe as they watched the rocket ascend into the night sky.
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“Rocket launch +aurora? Literally a dream combination for me. Only problem is I live in Germany,” one TikTok user remarked.
“Imagine showing this to someone who lived 100 years ago. Ps. Imagine someone says the same thing for us, 100 years later,” another user commented.
“What a lovely, very special, once in a lifetime opportunity to witness,” said another.
While I can’t be alone in saying I think of The Simpsons and Seymour Skinner when I hear the words aurora borealis, the details of what causes the phenomenon are truly fascinating.
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“Auroras are brilliant ribbons of light weaving across Earth's northern or southern polar regions,” NASA has explained.
“These natural light shows are caused by magnetic storms that have been triggered by solar activity, such as solar flares (explosions on the Sun) or coronal mass ejections (ejected gas bubbles). Energetic charged particles from these events are carried from the Sun by the solar wind.
“Then these particles seep through Earth's magnetosphere, they cause substorms. Then fast moving particles slam into our thin, high atmosphere, colliding with Earth's oxygen and nitrogen particles.
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“As these air particles shed the energy they picked up from the collision, each atom starts to glow in a different color.”