Earth loses hundreds of tons of atmosphere to space every day

Science Alert
Scientists have known for some time that Earth’s atmosphere loses several hundred tons of oxygen each day.
They understand how this oxygen loss happens on Earth’s night side, but they’re not sure how it happens on the day side.
They do know one thing though; they happen during auroras.
According to a press release from NASA’s Earth Observatory, no two oxygen outflow events are exactly the same, which makes understanding them a challenge. They call the events ‘fountains of gas’ that escape the Earth during auroral activity, and the Earth Observatory has a mission dedicated to understanding them.
The mission is part of the NASA’s Earth Observatory program called VISIONS-2 (Visualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral Atom Sensing-2), and it requires certain conditions.
It’s set in Ny Alesund, Svalbard, Norway for good reason. It’s the northernmost year-round civilian settlement in the world. It has an ice-free harbour year round, and a modern rocket launch facility. There’s also no Sun in the winter night here to interfere with studying the auroras.
But there’s something else that makes this the perfect setting for the VISIONS-2 mission.
Every morning, Ny Alesund passes under a weak point in Earth’s magnetic bubble. The weak point is like a funnkel that channels the fierce solar wind into our upper atmosphere. That causes auroral displays, and boils the gases of our atmosphere off into the vacuum of space in an auroral fountain.
Recently, researchers with VISIONS-2 launched two sounding rockets to investigate oxygen loss during auroras. Sounding rockets are small, targeted rockets that can be launched quickly. In this case, the two rockets were loaded with cameras and other instruments, and prepared for launch.
The launch team has to be very patient. But of course, they have technology on their side. They don’t have to wait until they see the aurora, they have advanced notice of an aurora thanks to the DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) satellite.
DSCOVR is the NOAA’s solar wind observatory. It sits out at the LaGrange point between the Earth and the Sun and tells the VISIONS-2 team when the solar wind is powerful enough and oriented the right way to cause auroras. At best, the team gets about an hour warning.
Even with advanced warning, the team is cautious. If the solar wind turns out to be too weak, then they will have wasted the launch. If terrestrial wind conditions in Earth’s atmosphere are too strong, that’s also a problem.
The rockets are unguided, so they have to be oriented before launch to account for winds. Luckily, the team has another tool at their disposal, weather balloons launched every 30 minutes, as needed, to test the wind.