This revolutionary spacecraft makes these invisible storms visible. We eagerly anticipate the arrival of severe solar weather associated with solar maximum, which we are now entering. Previous spacecraft explored this turbulent region by detecting particles and fields as they passed through them. This technique limited their vision to small portions of this vast and dynamic region, extending beyond the Moon on the Earth's night side. Energetic Neutral Atom image of a storm cloud of energetic particles from the High Energy Neutral Atom Imager instrument.
Red colors indicate the highest intensity of incoming particles, blue represents the lowest.
We are looking from the sun towards the Earth, viewing the cloud beyond the Earth on the night side. All spacecraft systems have been successfully deployed and are operating normally. All scientific instruments are operating as expected and are returning images. The image of the aurora on the left is from precipitating protons, in the center from precipitating electrons, and on the right from combined protons and electrons. The overlay to the right shows green where the electron aurora dominates, red where the proton aurora dominates, and yellow where both are comparable.