SCHOOL OF SUSTAINABILITY

Preparing students to tackle global climate challenges.

/// PROF. YOAV YAIR

Prof. Yoav Yair completed an analysis of results obtained during the ILAN-ES (Imaging of Lightning And Nocturnal Emissions from Space) experiment, which was conducted in April 2022 as part of the Axiom company AX-1 private mission to the International Space Station, in the framework of Rakia, an Israeli set of experiments selected for flight by the Ramon Foundation and the Israeli Space Agency.

The ISS orbits the Earth at an average height of 420km every 93 minutes. The mission objective was to record transient luminous events – such as sprites, elves and blue-jets - from the Cupola window in the ISS, based on preliminary thunderstorm forecasts uploaded to the crew 24 to 36 hours in advance. During the 12-day mission, 82 different targets were uploaded to the TCO (Timeline Change Officer), of which 20 were imaged by the astronauts, yielding a total harvest of ~40 TLEs: sprites, elves and blues (blue corona discharges). The unparalleled quality of the new images proves the value of spacebased observations of atmospheric phenomena and was shared with the scientific community during international conferences held in Vienna and Chicago.

In conjunction with the space-based experiment, ground-based observations were attempted from schools in Israel, Hong Kong, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Ghana. Hundreds of schoolchildren and their science teachers were introduced to the physics of lightning and TLEs through Zoom lectures by Prof. Yair. The schools’ project was supervised by 12 Reichman University students from the School of Sustainability, who monitored daily weather forecasts in their respective countries and instructed teachers on where and when the ISS would pass above their school. This educational part was a major component of the project, even though no science data was obtained.