On the night of Feb. 4, 2013, NASA Goddard scientists watched a lighted wind-weighting balloon launch to measure the winds and s
On the night of Feb. 4, 2013, NASA Goddard scientists watched a lighted wind-weighting balloon launch to measure the winds and see if conditions were acceptable for a sounding rocket launch in Poker Flats, Alaska. Wind-weighting balloons help the launch team correct the rocket trajectory to make up for low level winds. The VISIONS (VISualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral atom imaging during a Substorm) sounding rocket mission is studying aurora – and a light green aurora can be seen in the background in this picture. Nonetheless, conditions were not strong enough for a launch that night. The principal investigator for VISIONS, Doug Rowland, reported on the morning of Feb. 5, 2013: "We had four or five hours of southward magnetic field in the solar wind, which indicates the potential for good aurora. We were also under a lot of cloud cover at all of our camera sites that we use to determine whether to launch. As the night went on we got a few teaser arcs of aurora but nothing that was strong enough to meet our launch criteria. VISIONS: Seeing the Aurora in a New Light A team of NASA scientists arrived in Poker Flats, Alaska at the end of January, 2013. The team is patiently waiting for the exotic red and green glow of an aurora to illuminate the sky. Instead of simply admiring the view, this group from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center of Greenbelt, Md., and The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, Calif. will launch a sounding rocket up through the Northern Lights. The rocket could launch as early as the night of Feb. 2, 2013, but the team has a two-week window in order to find the perfect launch conditions. Armed with a series of instruments developed specifically for this mission, the VISIONS (VISualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral ato
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Keywords: alaska, aurora, flats, goddard, nasa, poker, research, rock, rocket, science
