The UI Department of Physics and Astronomy is inviting you to join us for a live viewing event celebrating the launch of NASA’s TRACERS mission. The live viewing has been postponed until Wednesday, July 23 in Lecture Room One, Van Allen Hall, from 12:30 to 3 p.m.
The TRACERS mission – Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites – is led by David Miles, F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor for the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Iowa. The TRACERS spacecraft will lift off on July 23 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to begin its journey studying Earth’s magnetic interactions with the sun. Space X launch window is 1:13 p.m. to 2:11 p.m.
The TRACERS mission consists of twin satellites, T1 and T2, that will orbit Earth in tandem (one following the other) to study the interactions between the magnetic fields of the Sun and Earth and help answer long-standing questions about space weather, particularly how the Sun transfers energy, mass, and momentum to near-Earth space.
Traveling 10 to 120 seconds apart, the satellites will orbit Earth’s poles thousands of times during the estimated one-year mission before reentering the atmosphere and burning up. SpaceX has been contracted to deliver the satellites into low-Earth orbit aboard a Falcon 9, the world’s first reusable orbital-class rocket.
The TRACERS mission is part of NASA’s Small Explorers program, which conducts highly focused scientific investigations. UI space pioneer James Van Allen helped kick off the long-running program with Explorer I, which discovered the Earth’s radiation belts in 1958. Van Allen's cosmic ray instrument made the first in-situ space science measurements.
The event is open to the public. Allison Jaynes, associate professor in the department of physics and astronomy, will be on site at Van Allen Hall.
MORE INFORMATION:
NASA:
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/tracers/2025/07/18/nasas-tracers-mission-targeting-launch-on-july-22/
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/tracers/
University of Iowa:
https://stories.uiowa.edu/tracers-timeline