NASA Discovers Hidden Atmospheric Force Driving Particles Into Space | Space

A NASA rocket launched from near the North Pole has officially detected something first hypothesized more than 60 years ago: an ambipolar electric field sheathing the planet.

According to an agency release, the field’s existence was proven with measurements by the Endurance mission, a rocket launched to measure the planet’s global electric potential. The electric potential was expected to have a very weak effect on charged particles in the atmosphere, making it difficult to detect. However, the property may also be a reason life as we know it manages on Earth when we’ve not spotted it anywhere else.

Endurance launched from Ny-Ålesund in Svalbard, Norway, in May 2022, after being delayed due to “apocalyptic winds and white-out conditions,” as one team member put it. It was a fitting start to the mission, given its namesake is the ill-fated vessel of Sir Ernest Shackleton that sank in 1914 after being stuck in Antarctic ice. The wreck of the Endurance was discovered in 2022 at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.

“Svalbard is the only rocket range in the world where you can fly through the polar wind and make the measurements we needed,” said Suzie Imber, a space physicist at the University of Leicester and co-author of the paper, in the NASA release.

Endurance achieved an altitude of 477 miles (768 kilometers) on its…