Artist’s concept of the Earth’s Magnetic Field
NASA is about to launch the Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) as part of the Artemis mission.
The mission Artemisfrom the North American space agency, will begin a new chapter in space exploration and will count on the important contribution of Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI)which will capture the first images of Earth’s magnetic field.
The equipment, which will be on board Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar module, will aim to offer detailed images of the Earth’s magnetospherethe layer that protects our planet from solar radiation.
According to , the launch, scheduled for the middle of this month, is part of the CLPS (NASA Commercial Lunar Cargo Services) program.
After its successful landing, LEXI will go into action, starting its operation with a period of six days of continuous observation.
The instrument will be able to record the X-rays produced in magnetopausethe outer boundary of the magnetosphere, when interacting with the solar wind.
“We’re trying to get a comprehensive view of Earth’s space environment,” said Brian Walsh, a space physicist at Boston University and the project’s principal investigator. “A lot of physics may be abstract, but this will be visible science,” he added.
LEXI’s strategic positioning on the Moon will allow it to capture the behavior of the magnetosphere in real timeincluding its oscillations — a phenomenon described by scientists as “the breath” of the magnetic field.
“We expect to see the magnetosphere expand and contract for the first time,” said Hyunju Connor, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The movement that the specialist refers to is directly influenced by the intensity of the solar wind.
The contribution of the instrument is such that it will also help to investigate events of magnetic reconnectionthat is, when the Earth’s magnetic field lines interact with those of the solar wind, releasing energetic particles.
These particles can cause auroras worthy of being captured by a camera, but they also pose risks to satellites and terrestrial electrical networks.
