DUST Rockets Launched: March 15, 2005
Two successful DUST launches last night.
March 11, 2005
Well, we have had a convergence of bad karma, and hopefully have most efficiently gotten rid of a snowstorm, a huge aurora, and a broken radar all in the same night.
While we waited for the radar to be fixed (it’s fixed now), we kept track of the crazy ice tower on the side of the road back to Fairbanks, see http://www.alaskaalpineclub.org/IceWall/04-05IceWall5.html It had developed a serious crack on our drive out from town, and which had fallen over by the time we returned tonight.
We have high hopes for monday night; good weather is promised, the radar is fixed, and the auroral activity (which contaminates the dust data) is supposedly a localized high speed solar wind stream which may be over with by then.
March 11, 2005
We came within about 100 seconds of launching but the winds kept gusting around and range safety would not let us go. we had good auroral conditions (i.e., not much aurora and not much expected), relatively clear skies with good lidar data, and a happy rocket, but when the winds are very variable the launcher can not be pointed to compensate for the wind direction.
So, we are still here, and stood down until sunday night because of Chatanika Days. Tune in again on sunday night and we’ll see what happens. The aurora is supposed to pick up again on sunday though, so it’ll be a race between the weather staying clear and the aurora staying low.
March 9, 2005
We are now switched over to counting for the 2 small mesospheric rockets that will also be launched this season. These two rockets are much smaller and simpler, and are meant to reach an altitude of 105 km to study the suspended dust layer in the mesosphere left by burnt-up meteors. These launches will be done together with using the UAF/GI lidar system. The rockets are very small, though, and very sensitive to winds. Also, for the mesospheric study, we need to have little to no aurora. So, of course, for the first night of the dust window, we had high winds and strong aurora. We’ll try again tomorrow night.
We hope to get these two off either Wednesday or Thursday night, as this Friday and Saturday night the local Chatanika Lodge has its large winter festival, the “Outhouse Races”, and we are shut down from launching those two nights.