Kind: captions
Language: en
This is the most spectacular natural
light show on Earth.
These images, filmed from the
International Space Station, capture
what has drawn people from around the
world for centuries.
I have come all the way from Australia
to see it for myself. Welcome to Alaska.
I'm just outside of Fairbanks and I'm
trying to find the northern lights, the
Aurora Borealis.
As the sun enters the peak of its
11-year sunspot cycle, it ejects
high-speed electrons and protons into
space.
Deflected by the Earth's magnetic field,
they collide with the upper atmosphere
near the poles, producing the aurora.
But with spectacular lights also comes
the threat of disruption to our
technological infrastructure.
Charges streaming in from the sun can
damage satellites, cause extensive power
outages, and disrupt the flight paths of
planes around the poles.
Scientists warned that unless we find
out more about solar storms, we are
extremely vulnerable to a geomagnetic
catastrophe.
It's fed by the glaciers of the Alaska
mountain range. As you can see,
to further this research, I'm joining a
team of scientists, teachers, and
students.
Today, we're flying over the snow
coververed mountains of Denali National
Park to test out our gear in spectacular
surrounds.
[Music]
So, what sort of research are you doing?
Yeah, well, uh, we typically do high
altitude balloon launches. That's sort
of the gist of project ether for
students especially that don't have
access uh to the near space environment.
You know, we we try to open that up.
We're trying to further the science of
of auroral research and and looking at
the details of how sort of the global
electrical circuit connects and how the
aurora plays into that and causes this,
you know, beautiful aurora and and sort
of the physics involved there. Light her
up.
Using a full tank of helium, the team
inflates a latex weather balloon to 2 m
in diameter. This provides enough lift
for a 6 to 7 kg payload.
We're going to send this up uh well
about 25 km or so. This will help us
assess wind conditions in the upper
atmosphere in preparation for tonight's
launch into the aurora.
Liftoff.
That's actually a really good buoyancy.
Just a little bit of lift.
When it goes up, this latex is flexible
until it keeps expanding and expanding
expanding. You go from about 6 or 8 feet
up to about 30 ft diameter. So the, you
know, 10 m. So you're the size of a
small house at that point. You know,
eventually you reach some limit where it
just can't keep expanding. And then it
pops and then you fall back down and uh
we fall by parachute.
The recovered footage provides a
stunning view from the edge of space.
But the real challenge is launching a
weather balloon into the aurora at
night.
The conditions haven't been ideal
because tonight it's a bit cloudy, a bit
hazy, and we've got a moon out which is
nearly full. So, it makes it very
difficult to spot these northern lights.
3 2 1.
The balloon must rise into the
stratosphere at just the right moment to
catch the intermittent aurora in action.
[Music]
The next morning, we're on the hunt for
the payload.
From 30 balloons, only one caught sight
of the aurora.
This is the first shot of the aurora
from a weather balloon at nearly eye
level.
[Music]
For them to build some sort of rig, put
a camera on it, touch it, lick it, smell
it, send it up 100,000 ft to the edge of
space and get it back. Um, you know,
it's really awesome to see those those
pictures and to see that, you know, your
device went up there
with young scientists taking up the
challenge. These images and the data
gathered provide just a glimpse into the
future of research on the aurora and how
solar emissions affect our lives.
[Music]