GEODESIC Rocket Swoops Through Brilliant Aurora By Maia Weinstock Staff Writer posted: 02:57 am ET 07 March 2000 ET
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A joint Canadian Space Agency/NASA rocket lifted off flawlessly into the night sky last February. Just 17 minutes later, it fell back to Earth, slamming into the Beaufort Sea, off the coast of Alaska. What went wrong?
Nothing, said project officials. In fact, the rockets 1,231-mile (1,981-kilometer) round-trip flight, part of a mission to study charged light displays called
Launched from Poker Flat, Alaska on February 26, 2000, the Black Brant 12rocket made its brief flight through an aurora, measuring charged particles and Earths electromagnetic field along the way. The experiment was part of
GEODESIC, an $4 million jointly-funded Canada-U.S. project aimed at inspecting small energy pockets in Earths atmosphere, which are thought to contribute to the creation of auroral light displays.
"From a science standpoint it was a great flight," said Dave Beattie, GEODESIC payload manager at Bristol Aerospace in Winnipeg, Canada. The GEODESIC rocket successfully flew 615 miles (990 kilometers) to reach Earths ionosphere, a high-altitude layer of free electrons and ions, where auroras originate.
Auroras are caused by the collision of Earths atmosphere and charged energy from the sun. Normally, Earths magnetic field acts as a barrier against penetration of harmful solar energy waves. But there are "holes" in the magnetic field at Earths magnetic poles. These holes leak solar energy into Earths atmosphere.
"When solar wind blows by a planet that has a magnetic field, it creates a huge electrical generator," explained David Knudsen, principal investigator for GEODESIC and researcher at the University of Calgary. "This huge generator creates electric currents in near-earth space, which form beams of electrons thousands of kilometers above the visible part of an aurora. When these electron beams hit the upper atmosphere they cause it to glow just like a TV screen or computer monitor."
GEODESIC flew through an aurora like this one to study how such light shows form.
GEODESIC, which stands for "Geoelectrodynamics and Electro-Optical Detection of Electron and Supra-thermal Ion Currents," was designed to study how small cavities in the aurora lead to intense heating of charged particles in the upper ionosphere.
"Normally, the ionosphere is a couple of thousand degrees Celsius," Knudsen said. "Within these little concentrated heating cavities, however, it heats up to about a million or so degrees. We want to know why."
To gather information, the GEODESIC rocket deployed a number of flexible booms: arm-like appendages that collected ion and electron "images" at a rate of 93 per second, or one image every 30 to 50 feet (9 to 15 meters). A total of over 99,000 frames of data -- 70,000 of which are usable for later analysis -- were taken and beamed back to mission controllers before the rocket reentered Earths atmosphere and ceased to function.
"We actually got what looks like movies of ion distribution throughout the flight," Knudsen said.
Fortunately for GEODESIC researchers, now is a great time to study auroras. The frequency of these glowing events is currently very high due to a temporary period of increased
The suns increased activity is also helping researchers study how fluctuations in Earths magnetic field impact human life. When solar winds increase in strength and frequency, the likelihood of events such as massive
communications outages soars. In 1989, for example, the Canadian province of Quebec experienced a nine-hour blackout due to a huge solar flare. Researchers are looking to better understand such outages and how they might be prevented in the future.
NASA is already planning to launch a second rocket to study Earths auroras and magnetic field. Though still in the planning stages, the rocket will most likely carry similar instruments as those on board the GEODESIC rocket. Called Cusp2001, the new project is scheduled to blast off in December 2001.
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