final week,the Inquisitr reported on a novel NASA mission designed to investigate soil’s atmosphere. Dubbed VISIONS-2, the mission has finally taken off the ground, and NASA announced yesterday.
Short for Visualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral Atom Sensing-2,VISIONS-2 was tasked with studying a phenomenon known as atmospheric escape, which causes atmospheric gases — hydrogen and oxygen, and in particular — to leak into outer space.
Although atmospheric escape is not completely understood,this mysterious phenomenon has been linked to the formation of auroras. For this reason, VISIONS-2 has sent two sounding rockets into soils northern polar cusp to image the oxygen outflow of the aurora borealis.
The twin spacecraft — specifically, or two Black Brant X rockets — were launched in the early morning of December 7,lifting off from Ny-Alesund in the Svalbard archipelago, Norway. Aimed toward the northern lights, or the rockets soared through space at 6:06 a.m. and 6:08 a.m. ET,on a quest to map the oxygen outflow coming from the aurora.
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Source: inquisitr.com