00:003, 2, 1!
00:04This is the Endurance rocket ship, and she's about to discover something incredible and
00:08fundamental about the Earth.
00:11So why here?
00:12What makes Earth this special place that we all call home?
00:16One of the reasons may be due to the energy fields that our planet creates.
00:21So the first one's gravity.
00:22You're very familiar with gravity.
00:24It's important for life because it's holding our atmosphere on.
00:28If you don't have enough gravity, your atmosphere tends to escape to space, like at Mars.
00:33The second field is the magnetic field.
00:36It's this shield that's protecting our planet from the stream of particles that comes from
00:41the sun.
00:42So our rocket has discovered and finally measured number three.
00:45It's called the ambipolar field, and it's an agent of chaos.
00:49It counters gravity, and it strips particles off into space.
00:53Whenever spacecraft have flown over the poles of the Earth, they felt this supersonic wind
00:58of particles called the polar wind flowing out into space.
01:03There must be some invisible force lurking there responsible for this outflow, but we've
01:07never been able to measure this before because we haven't had the technology.
01:11So we built the Endurance rocket ship to go looking for this great invisible force, right,
01:16this ambipolar electrical field for the first time.
01:19So we were expecting to hopefully find the source of this polar wind, but what we weren't
01:23expecting was this other thing that it does to our skies and to the atmosphere, which
01:27is just so profound.
01:30There's only one launch site in the world far enough north to actually try and launch
01:36into this thing.
01:37And it's in the very north of this tiny island called Svalbard, and it's off the coast of
01:41the north of Norway, which meant a little bit of a trek to get it to the launch site.
01:54About to sail today from Mungerbyen to Ny-Ålesund, off the coast, for about 14 hours.
02:06We had a couple of days of being completely whited out, and now it's calm in this beautiful
02:12country.
02:13I have a feeling this might be the day.
02:18Solar.
02:19Solar go.
02:20Radar.
02:21Go.
02:22Mission control, this is Endurance.
02:24Go flight.
02:25We are go for launch.
02:27I think we're about to launch a rocket.
02:30Three, two, one.
02:33Liftoff.
02:35Touchdown.
02:43During the 15-minute suborbital flight, we successfully measured this ambipolar field
02:48for the first time.
02:50When you add up all of the strength of it over the whole flight, a whole potential drop
02:54is only about half a volt.
02:55And that's nothing, right?
02:56That's about as strong as one of those tiny little watch batteries.
02:59But that's exactly the amount that you need to explain this polar wind escape, this outflow.
03:06Because we measured it for the first time, we can actually understand the role it plays
03:13in the atmosphere.
03:14And despite being weak, it's incredibly important.
03:17It counters gravity and it basically lifts the skies up.
03:21It's like this conveyor belt that's lifting this atmosphere up into space.
03:26So like us, you're probably left with a lot of questions, right?
03:29What does this field do?
03:30What's it for, right?
03:32How has it shaped the planet?
03:33And I can't tell you yet.
03:36This field is so fundamental to understanding the way the planet works.
03:41It's been here since the beginning alongside gravity and magnetism.
03:45It's been lofting particles to space and stretching up the sky since the beginning.
03:51It's probably had an impact on the evolution of the atmosphere.
03:54I can't tell you how much yet.
03:56It may even have left a mark on the oceans.
03:58How much, I don't know.
04:00This field is a fundamental part of the way Earth works.
04:04And now we've finally measured it, we can actually start to ask some of these bigger
04:08and exciting questions.
04:16NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
04:20California Institute of Technology
04:25NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
04:30California Institute of Technology
04:35NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
04:40California Institute of Technology
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