Суборбитальные пуски (научные и экспериментальные)

Автор Salo, 05.07.2011 20:10:32

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tnt22

http://www.mynewsdesk.com/no/nammo/pressreleases/nucleus-completes-successful-first-launch-2721547
Цитировать

​Nucleus completes successful first launch
Press Release   •   Sep 27, 2018 16:10 CEST


Nucleus at the moment of launch from Andøya Space Center (Photo: Nammo)

On Thursday 27 September Nammo successfully completed the first launch of Nucleus, a sounding rocket powered by its new hybrid rocket motor.

Nucleus launched at 14:16: local time from Andøya Space Center in Northern Norway, and reached an altitude of 107.4 km. That made it not only the first rocket powered by a Norwegian motor design to cross the Karman line, the commonly recognized border to space, but also the first European hybrid rocket motor to do so in more than 50 years.
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"This is a tremendous achievement, and we are really proud of the entire space team. We have invested a lot of time and effort in this project, and it was such a great experience to finally watch it take off earlier today" said Morten Brandtzæg, president & CEO of the Nammo Group.

The launch was also welcomed by the Norwegian government.

"The Nucleus launch is a manifestation of the know-how and technological prowess of Norwegian industry. I congratulate Nammo and Andøya Space Center on bringing Norwegian space technology a huge step forward," said Minister for Trade and Industry, Mr. Torbjørn Røe Isaksen.

The Hybrid Rocket Motor powering Nucleus has been developed by Nammo at Raufoss in Norway, and could potentially power a whole new generation of smaller European launch vehicles.

"Even though hybrid rockets have been around since the thirties, a number of technical challenges have remained. We are proud that we have been able to solve these, and get the concept to work for the first time", said Adrien Boiron, lead engineer on the Nucleus project.

Nucleus is a sounding rocket, designed to lift scientific instruments into the upper layers of the atmosphere. The hybrid rocket motor propelling it, however, can be scaled up to lift a wide range of payloads, including small satellites into low earth orbit.

"For this specific flight, Nucleus carried 3 technical experiments aloft. The most important one being the ASC/UiO 4D-SPACE module loaded with its 6 daughter payloads. During flight, the daughters were released 2 at the time when the rocket passes 60 km altitude. They measured small-scale plasma structures and transmitted data back to the main 4D-Space module. In addition we also tested a newly ASC developed pyrotechnical system and an inertial unit (IMU) from Sensonor AS", said Kolbjørn Blix, Director of Space Systems at Andøya Space Center.

Nammo is hoping that the new propulsion technology demonstrated with Nucleus will be able to power future launch vehicles for small satellites.

"Over the next few years there are plans to launch thousands of small satellites. The benefit of our new hybrid rocket motor is they can lift them into orbit with the accuracy of a liquid fueled engine, but without the associated complexity and costs, making it ideal for smaller European launch sites," said Onno Verberne, Nammo's VP of Business Development for space.

Today, only a sel ect few nations – Russia, India, China, USA, France and Japan – have the capacity to build launch vehicles for satellites and send them into space fr om home bases. If the technology demonstrated in the Nucleus is successful, Norway has the potential to join them.

Facts about Nucleus.

The Nucleus rocket is 9 meters long and has a total weight of around 800 kg. The motor gives a thrust of 30 KN (3 tons). The planned future version of the engine would give 75-100 KN of thrust.
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tnt22


tnt22

SARGE
(reusable Suborbital Autonomous Rocket with GuidancE (SARGE)) - см #527 и #528
ЦитироватьChris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 13:19 - 13 окт. 2018 г.

ARTICLE:
Exos Aerospace's SARGE rocket to serve as a platform for a reusable small satellite launcher -

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/10/exos-aerospaces-sarge-platform-reusable-small-satellite-launcher/ ...

- First NSF article on Exos Aerospace - by Michael Baylor (@nextspaceflight)

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tnt22

ASPIRE
ЦитироватьTesting a Parachute for Mars

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Опубликовано: 26 окт. 2018 г.

Watch as NASA tests a new parachute for landing the Mars 2020 rover on the Red Planet. On Sept. 7, NASA's ASPIRE project broke a record when its rocket-launched parachute deployed in 4-10ths of a second—the fastest inflation of this size chute in history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcAgnQ9K7UYhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcAgnQ9K7UY (2:50)

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ЦитироватьNASA Wallops‏Подлинная учетная запись @NASA_Wallops 13:00 - 16 нояб. 2018 г.

Hello from the top of the world! NASA is getting ready to launch an Antares rocket from Virginia, but across the globe in Svalbard, Norway, our sounding rocket team is preparing to launch the VISIONS-2 mission on two suborbital vehicles! Details: https://go.nasa.gov/2Ka4OzI .


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SARGE
ЦитироватьMichael Baylor‏ @nextspaceflight 19:38 - 17 нояб. 2018 г.

.@exosaerosystech is targetting January 5th, 2019 for the next launch of their SARGE sounding rocket. The mission will include payloads for educational institutions, NASA, and the FAA. The flight will take place from @Spaceport_NM.

http://exosaero.com/2018/11/17/exos-looks-to-the-future/ ...

http://exosaero.com/2018/11/17/exos-looks-to-the-future/
ЦитироватьFuture planning for Exos...
...
"Our next flight is slated for January 5th, 2019" says Quinn, "We will have a NASA REDDI payload for UCF, a NASA Tech Transfer payload, an FAA payload, several educational payloads, several memorabilia payloads, and... We will still have SPACEavailable... for your payload"

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VISualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral atom Sensing (VISIONS-2)

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/fromthefield/2018/11/21/going-to-the-top-of-the-world-to-touch-the-sky/
ЦитироватьGoing to the Top of the World to Touch the Sky
November 21st, 2018 by Doug Rowland


Aurora and stars over Ny-Ålesund. Credit: Chris Pirner

Two hundred people; two centuries, in the Roman style. That's what it takes to launch two rockets fr om the top of the world. One hundred here and another hundred back home to help with the designing and the building and the testing and the shipping and to take each of the thousand steps between an idea and the reality.

We are sixty-one team members in the field, Norwegians, Canadians, and Americans, technicians, engineers, and scientists. Payload team, instrument team, motor team, launcher team. Telemetry and tracking team, range team, safety team. All working together at the end of the Earth, far from home.
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Members of the VISIONS-2 payload team as they await their flight from Longyearbyen, Svalbard, to Ny-Ålesund. From left to right: Frank Waters, Jorge Camacho, Norman Morris, Mark Frese, Eric Taylor, Ted Gass, Koby Kraft, Ahmed Ghalib, Mike Southward. Credit: NASA

Then there are the Kings Bay staff. Pilot, purchaser, plumber, chef, cooks, and carpenter, harbormaster, mechanic, electrician, and the rest of the twenty-three souls that live here in Ny-Ålesund, keeping this community running through the long polar night. Rounding out our first century are the other workers and researchers at the Polar Institute, here in scientific communion.

In our second century are the team members we left at home. The machinists who turn solid aluminum into sleek and elegant instruments, each unique, purpose-built. The designers and technicians who imagined and then built each of the myriads of circuits and pulled the miles of electrical wiring. The administrative staff who make sure the bills get paid, the travel arrangements run smoothly, and emergencies are handled quickly and efficiently. For three years this team has worked so that the field team could spend weeks in the high Arctic, preparing our rockets and experiments.
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We have journeyed to Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, the northernmost town in the world, so that we can touch the sky.
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Ny Ålesund is the northernmost year-round civilian settlement in the world. On the shores of the Kongsfjord (King's Bay), it benefits from the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, which provides an ice-free harbor year-round. Once an important home of coal mining, it has changed focus to scientific research. At 78.9° N, the town is only 1237 km from the North Pole, and over 5700 km from Washington, DC.
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We are here because the harbor, even at 79° N, is open year-round. We are here because during the months of winter night, there is no Sun to share the sky with the shining aurora. We are here because there is a modern rocket launch facility on the shores of Kongsfjorden, once a home of fishermen and coal miners. Now our aim is a different kind of extraction – prying the mysteries of our upper atmosphere from the cold blackness.
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The last sunset I saw as I flew north from Oslo to Longyearbyen, Svalbard. This photo was taken near Tromsø, out the window of the airplane. Our team will not see the Sun again until they head south after the launch. Credit: Doug Rowland
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We are here because this is the one inhabited place on Earth that, every morning, passes directly underneath a weak point in our world's magnetic bubble, a funnel that channels the fierce solar wind into our upper atmosphere, sparking auroral displays, and boiling the gases of our atmosphere off into the vacuum of space. We are here to learn how this happens, and to take a picture.


Our mission, VISualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral atom Sensing (VISIONS-2), will launch from Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, between December 4 – 18, 2018. VISIONS-2 is part of the Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp, a dedicated sequence of 11 rockets launching over 2 years to study the interaction between the magnetic cusp and the upper atmosphere. The Grand Challenge is a multinational cooperative agreement between the US, Norway, and Japan that provides for open data sharing and scientific collaboration. The three nations are leveraging existing infrastructure to optimize scientific return from missions launched by all three countries.
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Like the old daguerreotypes, this picture will be primitive. It will be grainy. It will be such a long exposure as to blur the impatient atoms as they champ and strain under Earth's gravity. But this picture will reveal, in false-color chiaroscuro, the locations and strength of fountains of gas that shoot high out of the atmosphere, driven by the intense electric currents that course through the aurora.

Unlike the daguerreotypes, our picture does not register light striking a silvered plate. Our picture is built up by a glass plate that detects the impacts of very fast atoms, racing past their neighbors like a Formula 1 car overtaking a marathon runner. These atoms undergo their own marathon journey, traveling tens or hundreds of miles from the fountains wh ere they are born. But to see them, we must go to space. This because our planet's thick atmosphere absorbs any atoms which travel down towards us on the ground, blanketing us in ignorance and shrouding these fountains in mystery. Only a camera lofted above, to altitudes above this shroud, can reveal these atmospheric fountains and their link to the ghostly aurora.

So, we come to this place, the only one on Earth like it, bringing rockets to lift our cameras high. We come here in the long winter night, our way lit by the aurora's iridescence, and our hearts warmed by the welcome of our Norwegian friends and colleagues. We come here in the spirit of international cooperation and scientific endeavor to learn about our world, and perhaps, about ourselves.
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VISIONS-2

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/to-image-leaky-atmosphere-nasa-rocket-team-heads-north
ЦитироватьNov. 30, 2018

To Image Leaky Atmosphere, NASA Rocket Team Heads North

On a frigid morning in early December, a team of NASA rocket scientists will huddle in the control room in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, a remote archipelago off the northern coast of Norway. Here at the world's northernmost rocket range, operated by Norway's Andøya Space Center, the clock may read 8 a.m., but the Sun won't be up — by that time, it won't have peeked over the horizon in more than a month.

For a month's time, Ny-Ålesund will be home to the rocket team behind NASA's VISIONS-2 mission, short for Visualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral Atom Sensing-2. They have ventured to this extreme place for an up-close look at atmospheric escape, the process whereby Earth is slowly leaking its atmosphere into space. Understanding atmospheric escape on Earth has applications all over the Universe — fr om predicting which far off planets might be habitable, to piecing together how Mars became the desolate, exposed landscape it is today. VISIONS-2 is scheduled to launch no earlier than Dec. 4, 2018.
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Led by Doug Rowland of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, VISIONS-2 is a sounding rocket mission, a type of suborbital rocket that makes brief, targeted flights into space before falling back to Earth just a few minutes later. Sounding rockets are unique among scientific spacecraft for their superior dexterity: They can be carted to remote locations, where they are aimed and shot into short-lived events — like the sudden formation of the aurora borealis — at a moment's notice.

The aurora borealis is of keen interest to the VISIONS-2 team, but not just for its otherworldly glow. The aurora play are fundamental drivers in the process of atmospheric escape, whereby planets, including Earth, gradually leak their atmosphere into space.

"The Earth is losing weight," said Thomas Moore, a Goddard space physicist who specializes in atmospheric escape. "There have been enough observations to know that anywhere fr om a hundred to several hundred tons of atmosphere are going into space every day."

(Not to worry — at that rate, Moore estimates, Earth will retain its atmosphere for a billion or so years.)


VISIONS-1 launches fr om the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska on Feb. 6, 2013.
Credits: NASA/Goddard/Chris Perry

We've suspected that Earth was losing atmosphere since at least 1904, when Sir James Jeans first published his work The Dynamical Theory of Gases, laying the theoretical foundations for atmospheric escape. But there's one element draining away that still presents a mystery. Scientists had long thought that oxygen, weighing in at 16 times the mass of hydrogen, was too heavy to escape Earth's gravity.

"To escape Earth, oxygen would require something like 100 times the energy that it typically has," said Rowland, the mission's principal investigator. "Only the tiniest fraction should ever make it." But when scientists finally went up and looked in the '60s and '70s, that's not what they found. In fact, near-Earth space is teeming with much more Earth-borne oxygen than anyone had expected.

"But how did it get up there? You need processes that energize that oxygen enough to escape," said Rowland.

The aurora, it turns out, is one such process. The aurora are formed when energetic electrons, accelerated in the electric and magnetic fields in near-Earth space, crash into and excite atmospheric gases, which emit bright hues of red, green, and yellow as they relax back to a lower energy state. But these unruly electrons also create a cascade of havoc in the process, including driving electric currents that heat the upper atmosphere in splotchy patches. In some cases, that heating is sufficient to give stray oxygen atoms enough energy to escape. "It's like putting a heating element into your soup — eventually, it's going to start boiling," said Rowland.

VISIONS-1, the current mission's precursor, launched fr om the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska in 2013, where they studied oxygen outflow from aurora that form on Earth's night side, the part of the planet that is temporarily pointed away from the Sun. For the VISIONS-2 mission, the team will travel to a unique part of the globe wh ere dayside aurora can be found.

Once a day, Svalbard passes under an unusual feature in Earth's magnetosphere known as the polar cusp. The polar cusps form at both the North and South poles on the Sun-facing side of the planet, and they are the only places wh ere particles from the solar wind can stream directly into our atmosphere. The cusps are like magnetic bridges between Earth and space, wh ere energetic electrons from the Sun crash into atmospheric particles and create a dayside aurora.

VISIONS-2 will fly two rockets into the northern polar cusp, wh ere it will use an imaging technique to map oxygen outflow from the aurora. Using this technique, VISIONS-2 takes a different approach from many other missions, which attempt to combine data from many outflow events. Instead, VISIONS-2 hopes to acquire a great deal of data about a single oxygen outflow event. Not all outflow events are the same, but understanding one in great detail would provide significant scientific value.

"It's like if you're trying to study tornados, you could just measure the winds as various tornadoes fly by at different distances from your house," said Rowland. "You'd get a picture of what an 'average' tornado looks like. What we want to do instead is to comprehensively observe one tornado, to understand how it works in detail."


Earth's magnetosphere, showing the northern and southern polar cusps (illustration).
Credits: Andøya Space Center/Trond Abrahamsen

VISIONS-2 is all about checking whether and how the process for the heating and energizing of oxygen on the dayside aurora — within the polar cusp — is the same as those discovered on the night side. It's far from a foregone conclusion, as the dayside and nightside display some marked differences.

"The ion outflow in the cusp is more steady and lower energy, while that in the nightside is more bursty and can be higher energy," Rowland explained. "In addition, the environment is different between the cusp and nightside, so we're looking for commonalities and differences."
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VISIONS-2 won't be the only rocket to launch from this remote location: It is the first of nine sounding rockets launching over the next 14 months as part of the Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp. Drawing researchers from the United States, Canada, Norway, the UK and Japan, the Grand Challenge is an international collaboration to explore the northern polar cusp, hopefully cracking the code of this unusual portal between Earth and space.

VISIONS-2 is scheduled to launch from Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard rocket range in December 2018. The launch window extends from December 4 through 18.

By Miles Hatfield
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.


Last Updated: Nov. 30, 2018
Editor: Rob Garner

tnt22

ЦитироватьNASA Wallops‏Подлинная учетная запись @NASA_Wallops 27 нояб.

Five rockets. Three missions. Three days in a row. Here's what's on deck from Wallops:
White Sands, New Mexico: DEUCE mission, launching Dec. 3
Svalbard, Norway: VISIONS-2 mission window opens Dec. 4
: Andøya, Norway: TRICE-2 mission window opens Dec. 5


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DEUCE

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/a-light-in-the-dark-nasa-sounding-rocket-probes-the-dark-regions-of-space
ЦитироватьA Light in the Dark: NASA Sounding Rocket Probes the Dark Regions of Space

Though stars and galaxies fill our night sky, most of the matter in the universe resides in the dark voids in between. Spread out over unfathomable distances, this cold, diffuse gas between galaxies — called the intergalactic medium, or IGM for short — hardly emits any light, making it difficult to study.

Scientists plan to launch a sounding rocket for a fifteen-minute flight Dec. 3, 2018, equipped with special ultraviolet optics, which they hope will shed light on the nature of the IGM. The Dual-channel Extreme Ultraviolet Continuum Experiment, or DEUCE for short, plans to measure starlight from a pair of nearby hot stars in the constellation Canis Major, aiming to help researchers understand how the IGM got to its current state.
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The DEUCE payload sits atop a NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Credits: NASA

Scientists know that the IGM, which is mostly hydrogen, has been blasted with high-energy radiation, causing the electrons to break apart from their atoms — a process known as ionization. Many think intense ultraviolet starlight from star-forming galaxies is responsible for ionizing the universe, but not all agree this is the sole cause. Since Earth's atmosphere blocks ultraviolet light, it is impossible to study this type of radiation from the ground. Instead, scientists must capture this light from above the atmosphere, and sounding rockets — which provide an inexpensive alternative to space telescopes — are a practical option.


The DEUCE grating, sensitive to ultraviolet, is carefully positioned for bonding into its flight mount.
Credits: Nicholas Erickson

DEUCE was first launched in Oct. 2017, from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. However, science data was not obtained because of an issue with the payload's attitude control system. The payload descended by parachute and was recovered. Following an extensive investigation by the NASA Sounding Rocket Program and a payload redesign, the follow-up flight was approved.

"DEUCE is about being able to better understand if and how star-forming galaxies ionized the early universe," said Nicholas Erickson, a graduate student at the University of Colorado Boulder working with the project. "This ionizing light has never been measured accurately in hot stars, and DEUCE will make the first calibrated measurement of it, telling us the contribution stars could have had to helping ionize the universe."

Over two flights, DEUCE will look at two young, bright stars — first Epsilon Canis Major and later Beta Canis Major— using a telescope sensitive to ultraviolet light. These stars are close enough that their light reaches Earth before being fully absorbed by interstellar gas, allowing the scientists to measure the amount of starlight to see if it's enough to significantly contribute to the amount of ionized gas in the IGM.

"It's a hard measurement to make, because there still is neutral hydrogen between stars that is extremely effective at absorbing the starlight at these wavelengths," said Erickson. "To be seen at Earth, you need a really bright star that's close by, and there are only two stars that are viable candidates for this measurement."

DEUCE uses a microchannel plate detector — the largest ever flown in space — to measure the starlight. The mission, in addition to providing scientific data, will test this type of large UV detector for readiness in future large-scale space missions. The second DEUCE flight to look at Beta Canis Major has not yet been scheduled.
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The experiment will launch aboard a Black Brant IX sounding rocket from White Sands. NASA's sounding rocket program, based at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility, flies 20 rockets annually, testing new instruments and supporting cutting-edge research in astrophysics and heliophysics.

By Mara Johnson-Groh
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.


Last Updated: Dec. 1, 2018
Editor: Rob Garner

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TRICE-2

ЦитироватьNASA Wallops‏Подлинная учетная запись @NASA_Wallops 4 ч. назад

The two rockets launching the TRICE-2 mission to suborbital space are in position at @AndoyaSpace, ready for a launch attempt scheduled for tomorrow morning. They're in insulated foam until launch to protect the payload from the cold Norwegian air.


tnt22

TRICE-2

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-funded-twin-rockets-to-tag-team-the-cusp
ЦитироватьDec. 3, 2018

NASA-funded Twin Rockets to Tag Team the Cusp

In early December, observers in northern Norway will be treated to an unusual show: a sounding rocket double feature. Arcing up over the Norwegian sea, the first rocket will blast off to an altitude of more than 600 miles high, headed due north. Approximately two minutes later, at a lower altitude, another rocket will follow its path.

These twin rockets are chasing down a mystery about magnetic reconnection, the explosive process that allows charged particles fr om space to stream into Earth's atmosphere. Carefully observing anomalies in this stream of particles, scientists have wondered about the processes that let them in: Does magnetic reconnection turn on and off, like a faucet, or do particles course in fr om separate locations, like the distinct streams of a sprinkler?

Armed with two rockets and a clever experimental design, the scientists behind the TRICE-2 mission, short for Twin Rockets to Investigate Cusp Electrodynamics-2, hope to uncover an answer. The results promise to shed light on the fundamental process of magnetic reconnection and, in the long run, help us better predict how and when Earth's magnetic shield can suddenly become porous and let outside particles in.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyuTyEw3etk
Animation showing Earth's magnetosphere as it interacts with the solar wind.
Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Tom Bridgman
Download this video in HD formats fr om NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio

Earth is surrounded by a magnetosphere, a giant magnetic shield created by the churning of liquid iron deep inside the planet. Our magnetosphere is what stands between us and a steady rain of electrically charged ions and electrons streaming from the Sun, known as the solar wind.

For the most part, it holds strong. But occasionally, it gives way.

"When the solar wind encounters Earth, the energy and field lines of the Sun's magnetic field can connect up with those of Earth," said Craig Kletzing, a physicist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and TRICE-2's principal investigator. The magnetic reconnection process creates a bridge between the solar wind and Earth, allowing ions and electrons from the Sun to stream directly into Earth's atmosphere via a region known as the polar cusp.

"All of these field lines [where magnetic reconnection occurs] funnel down into what we call the cusp," said Stephen Fuselier, a space physicist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas and TRICE-2 team member. "When you fly through that region, you get the time history of all the fields that you're crossing."


Earth's magnetosphere, showing the northern and southern polar cusps.
Credits: Andøya Space Center/Trond Abrahamsen

The polar cusp is a weak spot in our magnetic bubble — but it's also a place to investigate magnetic reconnection processes that occurred in otherwise difficult-to-access regions of Earth's magnetosphere. Researchers have measured the solar wind ions that pour in through the cusp for clues about magnetic reconnection processes that allow entry. But so far, a puzzling feature of these ions remains unexplained.

As solar wind ions race along the newly reconnected magnetic field lines, they spread themselves out like runners in a marathon. The fastest-moving ions move to the front of the pack, overtaking those moving at slower speeds. Slower-moving ions gradually fall behind. In theory, this process should create a constant, unbroken stream of particles, smoothly varying by energy levels: the highest energy ions reach Earth first, followed by slower and slower ions behind them.

But when spacecraft have measured the ions that pour in, they don't find such a smooth, unbroken stream — instead, they find abrupt transitions from high to low energies.

"What people actually observe is something that has little steps," said Kletzing. "So then the question becomes: What causes those steps?"

Puzzled by these results, scientists developed two models of magnetic reconnection that might produce them. The first model suggests that magnetic reconnection varies in time, like a faucet being turned on and off. The abrupt changes, or steps, in the data are produced because the faucet switches from on to off and vice versa, releasing particles in short spurts.

"The other possibility is that we're seeing four or five different places wh ere reconnection is happening," said Kletzing. According to this model, the steps are the result of the spacecraft passing through different magnetic reconnection events, like a finger running along the separate streams of a sprinkler. As your finger passes through one stream and abruptly enters a new one, you feel a sudden change — a step in the data.


The two rockets for the Twin Rockets to Investigate Cusp Electrodynamics, or TRICE-2, are in the launch position during a dress rehearsal at the Andøya Space Center in Norway, Dec. 1, 2018. The two NASA Black Brant XII sounding rockets are encased in an insulation form to keep the motors and payload warm. The launch window for TRICE-2 is Dec. 4–19, 2018. TRICE-2 is one of nine missions for the Grand Challenge Initiative – Cusp, an international collaboration to explore the northern polar cusp – wh ere Earth's magnetic field lines bend down to meet the poles and particles from space can enter our atmosphere.
Credits: NASA/Jamie Adkins

The TRICE-2 team designed their mission to differentiate these two models. The key difference between them, they reasoned, is whether the observations should change over time.

If reconnection is turning on and off like a faucet, the specific pattern of steps you observed should be changing all the time. "If you flew through a minute or two later, the whole pattern would be different," said Kletzing.

But if reconnection is more like a sprinkler, with different streams fixed to different locations, then you should feel the same steps no matter what time you passed through them. "In that case, two minutes later you should see exactly the same pattern in the same place."

To distinguish between these two models, the TRICE-2 team will fly two rockets that will traverse the same path, approximately two minutes apart. They will be measuring the ions in the atmosphere, looking out for the steps, or abrupt changes, in ion energy levels. If the two rockets detect the steps in the same, fixed locations, that suggests they are passing through different reconnection events, and reconnection is more like a sprinkler. If they don't observe the same steps in the same location, the faucet must be turning on and off — reconnection is changing over time.

For the TRICE-2 mission, aligning the trajectories of their two rockets is especially important to their mission.

"It's not that people haven't tried this before with various satellites," said Kletzing. "But it's very hard to get two satellites to have the right distance in time and location to really make that happen."

So the TRICE-2 team will use sounding rockets, sub-orbital spacecraft that make short, targeted flights into space before falling back down to Earth. Sounding rockets can be timed and aimed precisely, adjusting their launch directions at a moment's notice to accommodate local winds and weather conditions.

The TRICE-2 mission is one of nine sounding rocket missions taking part in the Grand Challenge Initiative – Cusp, an international collaboration to explore the northern polar cusp. Over the next 13 months, researchers from the United States, Canada, Norway, the UK and Japan will fly their rockets from the rocket ranges at the Andoya Space Center and Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard to unravel the mysteries of this place wh ere Earth meets space.

The TRICE-2 mission will launch from Andoya Space Center in Andenes, Norway. The launch window extends from Dec. 4, 2018, to Dec. 19, 2018.

By Miles Hatfield
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
[свернуть]
Last Updated: Dec. 4, 2018
Editor: Rob Garner

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TRICE-2
ЦитироватьAndoya Space Center‏ @AndoyaSpace 2:33 - 8 дек. 2018 г.

The NASA TRICE-2 mission launched two sounding rockets from ASC today. First rocket was launched 08:26, and reached an apogee of 1042 kilometers, and the second rocket followed at 08:28 and had an apogee of 756 km.



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VISIONS-2
ЦитироватьAndoya Space Center‏ @AndoyaSpace 6:43 - 8 дек. 2018 г.

In addition to launching TRICE-2 today, ASC launched two rockets yesterday from our second launch site @ Svalbard. The first VISIONS-2 rocket launched 11:06 UTC, reached an apogee of 805km. The second launch followed at 11:08 UTC and reached 600km

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VISIONS-2
ЦитироватьJonathan McDowell‏Подлинная учетная запись @planet4589 15:37 - 8 дек. 2018 г.

The VISIONS-2 rockets, flights NASA 35.039GE and 35.040GE, used 3-stage Black Brant X vehicles (Terrier-Black Brant 5-Nihka). Payload PI was Rowland (NASA-Goddard)

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TRICE-2
ЦитироватьJonathan McDowell‏Подлинная учетная запись @planet4589 15:39 - 8 дек. 2018 г.

The TRICE-2 rockets, flights NASA 52.003UE and NASA 52.004UE, used 4-stage Black Brant XIIA rockets (Talos-Terrier Mk 70 -Black Brant Mk 1- Nihka). PI was Kletzing (U. Iowa).

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VISIONS-2

https://www.nasa.gov/2018/Wallops/feature/visions-2-provides-a-look-at-earth-s-escaping-atmosphere
ЦитироватьDec. 7, 2018

VISIONS-2 Provides a Look at Earth's Escaping Atmosphere


One of the two VISION-2 Black Brant X rockets breaks through its protective insulating foam box as it leaves the launch pad fr om Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, in Norway.
Credits: NASA/ Allison Stancil-Ervin

Two NASA sounding rockets were successfully launched Dec. 7 from Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, in Norway providing scientist a look at the process of Earth's atmosphere escaping into space.

The Visualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral Atom Sensing-2 or VISIONS-2 rockets were launched at 6:06 and 6:08 a.m. EST from the launch site operated by Norway's Andoya Space Center.

Preliminary information shows that the flights of the two Black Brant X rockets were successful and good data was received.

VISIONS-2 is looking at atmospheric escape, the process whereby Earth is slowly leaking its atmosphere into space. Understanding atmospheric escape on Earth has applications all over the Universe — from predicting which far off planets might be habitable, to piecing together how Mars became the desolate, exposed landscape it is today.
Спойлер
VISIONS-2 flew two rockets into the northern polar cusp, wh ere it used an imaging technique to map oxygen outflow from the aurora. Using this technique, VISIONS-2 takes a different approach from many other missions, which attempt to combine data from many outflow events. Instead, VISIONS-2 hopes to acquire a great deal of data about a single oxygen outflow event. Not all outflow events are the same, but understanding one in great detail would provide significant scientific value.


Time-lapse photograph shows the first stages of the VISION-2 Black Brant X rockets as they leave the launch pad from Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, in Norway.
Credits: NASA/ Allison Stancil-Ervin

VISIONS-2 was the first of nine sounding rocket missions launching over the next 14 months as part of the Grand Challenge Initiative (GCI) — Cusp. Drawing researchers from the United States, Canada, Norway, the UK and Japan, the Grand Challenge is an international collaboration to explore the northern polar cusp, hopefully cracking the code of this unusual portal between Earth and space.

The next GCI mission, the Twin Rockets to Investigate Cusp Electrodynamics-2 or TRICE-2, is on the launch pad at the Andoya Space Center in Andenes, Norway. The launch window for the mission and its two Black Brant XII rockets runs through Dec. 19.

VISIONS-2 is supported through NASA's Sounding Rocket Program at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. NASA's Heliophysics Division manages the sounding rocket program.

Keith Koehler
NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia
[свернуть]
Last Updated: Dec. 8, 2018
Editor: Patrick Black

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TRICE-2

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/Wallops/2018/nasa-sounding-rockets-carry-trice-2-over-norwegian-sea
ЦитироватьDec. 8, 2018

NASA Sounding Rockets Carry TRICE-2 over Norwegian Sea

Two NASA sounding rockets successfully flew over the Norwegian Sea early in the morning December 8 carrying an experiment to study the electrodynamics of the polar cusp.

The Twin Rockets to Investigate Cusp Electrodynamics or TRICE-2 were launched at 3:26 and 3:28 a.m. EST from the Andoya Space Center in Andenes, Norway. The first rocket flew to an altitude 646 miles and the second flew to 469 miles.


The two TRICE-2 Black Brant XII sounding rockets are seen in this time-lapse photograph soaring into space over the Norwegian Sea.
Credits: NASA/Jamie Adkins

Preliminary data show that the two four-stage Black Brant XII rockets performed nominally and good science data was received from both flights.
Спойлер
TRICE-2, from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, is exploring magnetic reconnection, the explosive process that allows charged particles from space to stream into Earth's atmosphere. The results promise to shed light on the fundamental process of magnetic reconnection and, in the long run, help us better predict how and when Earth's magnetic shield can suddenly become porous and let outside particles in.

TRICE-2 was the second of nine sounding rocket missions launching over the next 14 months as part of the Grand Challenge Initiative (GCI) — Cusp. Drawing researchers from the United States, Canada, Norway, the UK and Japan, the Grand Challenge is an international collaboration to explore the northern polar cusp, hopefully cracking the code of this unusual portal between Earth and space.

The next two missions in the GCI will be the Cusp Alfvén and Plasma Electrodynamics Rocket, or CAPER-2, mission from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, between Jan. 1 – 14, 2019 and G-Chaser between Jan. 10 – 14, 2019. G-Chaser is an educational mission carrying experiments developed by university students from the United States, Norway and Japan. Both missions will be conducted from the Andoya Space Center.

TRICE-2 is supported through NASA's Sounding Rocket Program at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. NASA's Heliophysics Division manages the sounding rocket program.

Keith Koehler
Wallops Flight Facility
[свернуть]
Last Updated: Dec. 8, 2018
Editor: Jeremy Eggers

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ЦитироватьJonathan McDowell‏Подлинная учетная запись @planet4589 19:06 - 9 дек. 2018 г.

Brazil's AEB launched the PSR-01 suborbital payload on a VS-30 rocket from Alcantara on Dec 9 at 1543 UTC. It reached an apogee of about 120 km.

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DEUCE

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/a-light-in-the-dark-nasa-sounding-rocket-probes-the-dark-regions-of-space
ЦитироватьUPDATE 11 a.m. EST, Dec. 3, 2018: DEUCE Launch Postponed to Dec. 17  The winds were unacceptable for launch this morning of the DEUCE payload on a NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.  The launch has been postponed to the next available launch opportunity which is no earlier than Dec. 17, 2018.