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First rocket campaign of 2025 concludes at Poker Flat range

Two NASA aurora research rockets launched from Poker Flat Research Range earlier this month provided good data for learning more about the fastest observable variations of the solar wind-driven light displays.

One rocket gathered information about flickering aurora, and the other gathered data about fast-pulsating aurora. Flickering auroras are fast, localized and associated with higher-frequency electromagnetic wave interactions. Fast-pulsating auroras are slower, broader and tied to lower-frequency wave phenomena.

The two rockets were for the mission, led by principal investigator Robert Michell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

“The instruments performed as they were designed to,” Michell said. “The preliminary data that we have looked at so far are good, and we have good measurements from the ground-based data.”

“We had good aurora for both launches,” he added.

The University of ���Ϻ�����Ƶ Fairbanks Geophysical Institute owns Poker Flat, located at Mile 30 Steese Highway, and operates it under a contract with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, which is part of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

The first in the rocket tandem launched at 10:07 p.m. Feb. 1. The second launched at 11:35 p.m. Feb. 8, when acceptable conditions developed on the final day of the two-week launch period.

A third rocket, with a mission to research another type of auroral activity, was not launched because the sought-after conditions, known as a “black aurora,” did not materialize.

needed the aurora to produce the desired effects and also required clear skies at the ground observation site in Venetie, a northern Interior ���Ϻ�����Ƶ community. Clouds and snow blocked the view for most of the launch window.

Weather also caused problems at Poker Flat, with days of unseasonably warm weather that melted snow followed by icy conditions at the launch site when the temperature fell. Ice froze wind instruments on the 150-foot tower, blocking critical information needed for launch.

Launch of the third rocket, for the mission, will likely be rescheduled, said principal investigator Marilia Samara, also of Goddard Space Flight Center.

That research seeks to understand the processes that create an optical aurora variation known as the black aurora, which to viewers seems to cut out sections of auroral light. That type of aurora occurs due to a decrease in particle precipitation in some regions of a visible aurora. 

“We cooperated with nature as best we could, but sometimes the conditions nature sets are just not the conditions that would produce the outcome a scientist might want,” Samara said. “That’s life as a scientist.”

“There’s nature in terms of what aurora will show for you, and there’s nature in terms of the conditions for launching the rocket,” she said.

Agencies and institutions involved in the two missions include the Air Force Academy; ���Ϻ�����Ƶ; Dartmouth College; University of California, Berkeley; University of Maryland; and Catholic University.  

���Ϻ�����Ƶ participants include professor Peter Delamere of the Geophysical Institute and College of Natural Science and Mathematics, Poker Flat chief scientist Don Hampton, Professor Emeritus Hans Nielsen, research professor Paul Bernhardt and graduate student researchers.

Poker Flat will also be the site of a . That mission, led by ���Ϻ�����Ƶ professor Mark Conde, will study the Earth’s far upper atmosphere during auroral substorms.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Kathe Rich, Poker Flat Research Range, 907-455-2103, ksrich@alaska.edu; Sarah Frazier, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, sarah.frazier@nasa.gov.

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