NASA LEXI Prepares To Shed More Light On Earth’s Magnetic Field

One of the 10 payloads to head to space aboard the CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) delivery will be the NASA LEXI instrument. This instrument has a very important and interesting job in space, as it’ll help shed more light on the Earth’s magnetic field through various X-ray pictures.

NASA LEXI To Take X-ray Pictures Of Earth’s Magnetic Field From The Moon

NASA LEXI also known as the Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager is now preparing for the launch aboard Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander. The lander’s payload includes seven of the 10 CLPS tools carried on, which will be a part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) initiative.

NASA has officially stated that this lunar mission will take place in mid-January 2025 with no set date at this time. The LEXI mission is part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, and it aims to “capture the first global images of the magnetic field that shields Earth from solar radiation.”

After landing, NASA LEXI will capture images of the X-rays of the magnetosphere that surround our home planet.

NASA points out that the images LEXI will take will be low-energy X-rays that are emitted when a stream of particles from a solar wind gets into the Earth’s magnetic field.

Additionally, NASA LEXI will also capture what is known as magnetic reconnection. This occurs when the Earth’s magnetic field lines merge with those in the solar wind coming from the Sun, this merger causes the release of energy-filled particles that rain down on Earth’s poles.

This entire mission aims to give us a better understanding of the Earth’s magnetic field, and how it “expands, contracts, and changes shape in response to the strength” of solar winds. In the words of Hyunju Connor, NASA lead for LEXI, this mission will help us “to see the magnetosphere breathing out and breathing in, for the first time.”

History Of NASA LEXI

While this mission to capture X-ray images of the Earth’s magnetic field is relatively new, NASA LEXI isn’t. The history of this impressive instrument can be traced back to 2012 when it was originally invented with the same goal it has today.

In 2012, LEXI embarked on its first mission in space to detect “low-energy X-rays over a wide field of view.” At this time, LEXI was known as STORM and was developed by Brian Walsh and a team at Goddard.

During its mission to space aboard a sounding rocket, STORM encountered some issues and fell back to Earth. The team recovered it and placed it on display at Goddard until NASA called for affordable Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) projects that could be completed quickly.

With this need, Brian Walsh and his team at Goddard took STORM out of the display glass, restored it, and refurbished it. After getting, it back to optimal working condition, they gave it not only a new mission but also a new name, Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-Ray Imager (LEXI).