Using observations from a NASA suborbital rocket, an international team of scientists, for the first time, has successfully measured a planet-wide electric field thought to be as fundamental to Earth as its gravity and magnetic fields.

Known as the ambipolar electric field, scientists first hypothesized over 60 years ago that it drove how our planet's atmosphere can escape above Earth's North and South Poles. Measurements from the rocket, NASA's Endurance mission, have confirmed the existence of the ambipolar field and quantified its strength, revealing its role in driving atmospheric escape and shaping our ionosphere—a layer of the upper atmosphere—more broadly.

Understanding the complex movements and evolution of our planet's atmosphere provides clues not only to the history of Earth but also gives us insight into the mysteries of other planets and determining which ones might be hospitable to life. A research paper on this topic is published in the journal Nature.

Since the late 1960s, spacecraft flying over Earth's poles have detected a stream of particles flowing from our atmosphere into space. Theorists predicted this outflow, which they dubbed the "polar wind," spurring research to understand its causes.

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