MANCHESTER, N.H. —

NASA launched a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday, with the University of New Hampshire playing a key role.

Dozens of UNH engineers, researchers, and students built two instruments on the rocket to study how space weather affects Earth.

Solar storms, a type of space weather, create the northern lights but can also disrupt technology on Earth, including communications and GPS.

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The instruments could help guide future space travel, including expeditions to Mars.

"If you want to set sail on the seas of space, you'd better know the weather, the space climate and the space weather, and that's what IMAP is all about is really understanding the physics and being able to predict it better so

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