University of Iowa TRACERS satellites launch into outer space
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University of Iowa TRACERS satellites launch into outer space
University of Iowa’s TRACERS project launched twin satellites Wednesday. The satellites will help scientists understand the effects of space weather, including solar wind. Some students helped make the satellites themselves – while others like Brendan Powers will work with the data it collects. It was a bittersweet day for some as they remembered Craig Kletzing, the mastermind behind the project, who passed away before the satellites could be launched, but a piece of him went up with the satellites. He put two of his guitar picks, one on each spacecraft.
The project is called TRACERS. That acronym stands for Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites.
The University held a watch party for its contributors and the public to see SpaceX launch the satellites.
Dozens of university students, professors, and researchers had a hand in building TRACERS, one of the largest research projects in university history.
Some students helped make the satellites themselves – while others like Brendan Powers will work with the data it collects.
“It’s super exciting. It was a great launch, it was perfect,” Powers said. “We’ll know within a few weeks how the instruments are doing and when we’ll actually start collecting data and doing science with it,” he said.
The satellites will help scientists understand the effects of space weather, including solar wind.
Sometimes those winds can reach the Earth’s atmosphere and cause issues with other satellites that give off GPS and other signals.
“We have a team that can inspect that data, basically determine what [weather] events are the most interesting and what events are less interesting,” Powers said.
But it was a bittersweet day for some as they remembered Craig Kletzing, the mastermind behind the project.
He passed away before TRACERS could be launched, but a piece of him went up with the satellites.
“The decision to put two of his guitar picks, one on each spacecraft and send it into space was an amazing idea and they went through so many bureaucratic hoops to make sure those picks could be on the spacecraft,” Allison Jaynes, University of Iowa Associate Professor for the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
The satellites will be in orbit for the next year, but if successful it could remain in space for longer.
“We’re hoping and we often see with these missions that we get extended missions and those extensions can go out for years depending on the health of the spacecraft and the instruments,” Jaynes said. “So one year for sure, and we’re hoping for more,” she said.
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Source: https://www.kcrg.com/2025/07/23/university-iowa-tracers-satellites-launch-into-outer-space/