NASA launched a sounding rocket from Alaska in the predawn hours of February 9, 2026, as part of a campaign to investigate one of the most puzzling features of the northern lights: the black aurora. While most aurora research focuses on the shimmering green and purple curtains that draw tourists to high latitudes, these missions aimed at the dark voids where light inexplicably vanishes, a phenomenon scientists have struggled to measure directly for decades. Together, the BaDASS and GNEISS missions are designed to collect in-flight data on the electrical architecture behind these eerie gaps.
Twin Rockets Pierce the Arctic Dark
At approximately 3:29 a.m. Alaska Standard Time, the BaDASS mission lifted off from Poker Flat Research Range, a facility owned and operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute under NASA contract. The rocket climbed to an apogee of approximately 224 miles (360 km), according to launch details from Wallops, placing its instruments squarely in the region where electrons behave in ways that create the black aurora effect. The launch was part of a broader sounding-rocket campaign at Poker Flat during a two-week window, with multiple missions scheduled around auroral conditions.
The BaDASS flight did not happen on its first try. An earlier 2025 launch window was scrubbed because conditions never materialized, according to the agency’s sounding rocket manifest. Sounding rockets are suborbital vehicles that carry scientific instruments into near-Earth space for brief flights, which means launch teams get only narrow windows when auroral activity, weather, and rocket readiness all align. Missing the 2025 window meant the science team had to wait a full year before getting another shot, raising the stakes for this February campaign and sharpening the focus on making every second of data collection count.
What Makes an Aurora Go Dark
The northern lights glow when charged particles from the sun spiral down along Earth’s magnetic field lines and collide with atmospheric gases, releasing photons. Black aurora can involve the opposite pattern: instead of electrons raining downward, electrons are observed accelerating upward in association with depleted regions of the ionosphere, leaving dark patches where light would otherwise appear. The European Space Agency’s four Cluster spacecraft confirmed this mechanism, showing that black aurorae act like an anti-aurora linked to upward-accelerated electrons and ionospheric holes associated with positive potential structures.
Researchers later used the Cluster archive to build a model of the electric fields and currents at the core of these dark features, revealing a process of ionospheric depletion and evacuation. But Cluster observed from orbit, thousands of kilometers above the action, averaging over large regions and long timescales. What has been missing is direct, close-range measurement inside the black aurora itself: a way to sample the electrons, fields, and plasma density right where the light disappears. That gap is exactly what the BaDASS and GNEISS missions were designed to fill, flying instruments through the phenomenon rather than watching from a distance and giving scientists a rare chance to test long-standing theoretical models against in situ data.
Diagnosing the Invisible From Inside
A central challenge with black aurora is that it looks, from the ground, like nothing at all. A dark gap in the aurora could be a region where electrons are fleeing upward, or it could simply be a quiet patch of sky. NASA mission materials note that without direct measurements, scientists risk misidentifying what they see, a problem that has long challenged ground-based observations. The only reliable diagnosis comes from detecting upward-moving electrons in situ, which requires flying instruments directly through the dark zones and correlating those measurements with cameras and ground-based radar.
The companion GNEISS mission, which uses two Black Brant IX sounding rockets, takes a different but complementary approach. According to NASA, it employs a radio-signal technique likened to a CT scan to map the electrical currents flowing through auroral structures, turning the upper atmosphere into a kind of three-dimensional laboratory. Where BaDASS targets the particle physics of the black aurora, GNEISS maps the broader electrical environment surrounding it, effectively imaging the current systems that shape when and where dark voids appear. Together, the two missions provide both the close-up particle data and the wide-angle current map that neither could deliver alone, embodying a systems-level strategy that has become more common across heliophysics as researchers seek to connect small-scale plasma processes to global space weather.
Why Dark Patches in the Sky Matter on the Ground
The black aurora is not just an academic curiosity. The upward electron flows that create dark patches also reshape the ionosphere, the electrically charged layer of the atmosphere that GPS signals, high-frequency radio communications, and some radar systems depend on. When electrons evacuate a region, they leave behind what ESA researchers described as ionospheric holes. If those holes form in predictable patterns tied to specific electric field configurations, researchers say this kind of work could eventually help improve forecasts of ionospheric conditions that affect satellite-based navigation and communication, much as scientists currently predict the effects of geomagnetic storms on power grids. In that sense, black aurora research feeds directly into the broader effort to understand how solar-driven disturbances ripple through Earth’s near-space environment.
One hypothesis worth testing in future work is whether the localized ionospheric shadows created by black aurora temporarily alter how GPS signals propagate through the affected region. Cross-referencing the electron data from the BaDASS flight with ground-based GPS scintillation logs recorded during the same event could reveal whether these dark auroral patches produce measurable signal degradation. If they do, black aurora research moves from pure heliophysics into practical space weather forecasting, a field with direct consequences for aviation routes over the poles, maritime navigation in high latitudes, and precision agriculture that relies on centimeter-level positioning. Those links underscore why NASA’s broader Earth science portfolio increasingly treats the ionosphere as part of an interconnected system that spans the ground, atmosphere, and space.
From Rockets to a Bigger Heliophysics Story
Although the black aurora campaign centers on a fleeting few minutes of rocket flight, it fits into a much larger narrative about how the sun shapes the space around Earth. Heliophysics missions track everything from solar flares to the solar wind, tying together the processes that ultimately drive auroras and their darker counterparts. NASA’s online platforms have been highlighting those connections through curated science and mission series that explain how focused experiments like BaDASS and GNEISS complement long-duration satellites, ground observatories, and theoretical work. In that context, the Poker Flat launches are less an isolated stunt than a carefully targeted probe into one missing piece of the space weather puzzle.
Public engagement is also evolving alongside the science. Through hubs such as NASA’s Plus portal, audiences can follow rocket campaigns, watch launch coverage, and explore explainer content that connects black aurora physics to everyday technologies. That storytelling often reaches beyond Earth, linking auroral research to the broader study of the solar system, where other magnetized planets host their own dazzling and sometimes puzzling auroras. By situating a pair of Alaskan sounding rockets within this wider frame, NASA underscores a central point: understanding why parts of the northern lights go dark is ultimately about understanding how our star interacts with planets, atmospheres, and the technological systems humans depend on.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
