After a successful rocket launch to study the northern lights in Norway, University of Iowa researchers are awaiting findings from devices they built and attached to the rocket, which measure magnetic fields and electron energy. The ICI-5b rocket took off from the Andøya Space Center on March 11 to study how bursts of energy from the northern lights create turbulence in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

As part of its Discovery and Innovation Awards, the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Iowa named David Miles 2026 Scholar of the Year. The award recognizes nationally distinguished achievement in research, scholarship, and creative activity in the past 24 months.

The Norwegian-built research rocket ICI-5b was sent into the aurora, carrying out detailed measurements of plasma turbulence. The collected data will be used in space weather research.

The successful launch of the UI‑designed TRACERS mission has paved the way for the new Iowa Spaceflight Laboratory, which is now under construction on the seventh floor of Van Allen Hall. The ISL will expand Iowa’s long‑standing leadership in space instrumentation, support future missions, and create new research and partnership opportunities.

Christian Hansen's photo of the TRACERS mission launch won first place in the faculty/staff/researcher category of the Capture Your Research! Photo Competition. Sponsored by NEXUS | Artineers and the Lichtenberger Engineering Library at the University of Iowa, Capture Your Research! is an image competition where students, faculty, and staff submit one image that captures the essence of their research.

The Miles Lab, sponsored by NASA, is restoring and advancing the nation’s capability to make high-fidelity magnetic field measurements needed to investigate space weather that can impact our communication and power grids on Earth and our assets in space.

A study from University of Iowa researchers reveals that the aurora borealis — the northern lights — appear brighter when electromagnetic waves in space interact with particles inside the aurora. Connor Feltman, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa, examined data from two rockets that were launched into the aurora from Andøya, Norway, in 2022, an Iowa-led experiment known as the ACES-II mission.

NASA’s newest mission, TRACERS, soon will begin studying how Earth’s magnetic shield protects our planet from the effects of space weather. Short for Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites, the twin TRACERS spacecraft lifted off at 11:13 a.m. PDT (2:13 p.m. EDT) on Wednesday, July 23, 2025, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The journal Space Science Reviews is publishing a collection of articles about the University of Iowa-led Tandem Reconnection And Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites (TRACERS) mission. This collection presents the science objectives of the mission, descriptions of the design and calibration of the plasma instruments, and other important aspects of the mission.

Researchers led by the University of Iowa have learned more about how Earth’s uppermost atmospheric layer may contribute to aurora, the colorful dance of lights in the skies in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.