Once Kristian Birkeland proved how northern lights actually worked based on his theory about it, the relation between particles from the sun, earths magnetic field and the poles, a string of norwegian pioneers studied the phenomena for a few decades. Up until 1960 actually. Then, some researchers from scandinavia and US teamed up to establish a facility for launching research rockets into the aurora, as balloons could not get high enough and satellites wasn't a thing really. They agreed on Andøya in northern norway as the perfect spot for such a rocket range. It was also directly under the northern lights oval too. Then in 18th august 1962, they launched the first rocket and has done so ever since. There are still lots to learn from the sun by studying the northern lights in the polar regions. A really exciting story actually.