UPDATES
Motor Failure: March 8, 2005
We are sorry to report that Cascades had a motor failure on Saturday night/Sunday morning. The third stage of the motor did not ignite. All timers and functions on the payload appeared to work fine, and the other 3 motors all performed apparently nominally, but the 3rd stage did not burn when its igniter was triggered.
Much investigation ensues.
A snow machine crew and helicopter went out to find and recover the payload this afternoon, and the snow machine crew was able to retrieve it and sled it back this evening. Considering that it landed at 180 mph, it is in remarkably recognizable condition. We will take it apart on Tuesday to see if anything inside is salvageable.
The event we launched into was beautiful; it was a substorm expansion very close to local midnight so the activity directly overhead was unbelievably beautiful. We would have seen lots of very structured aurora on the upleg of the flight, and passed through the polar cap boundary fairly close to overhead Kaktovic.
My students and I intend to work with the UAF/GI scientists to take observational ground camera data for the remainder of the week. We will open the window for the Dust launches Tuesday evening, but the level of auroral activity over the last few days may prevent our launching Dust for a day or two.
Increasing Activity: Friday March 4/Saturday March 5, 2005
Well, today was lots more exciting than the last few days, but no launch yet. If you look at yesterday’s message or at the “conde-gram” below you can see that over the next day or two we should be entering a period of increasing activity. It seemed to start tonight, but the aurora was teasing us, never being quite in the right place or following expected patterns. We brought the count down to T-3 three separate times, but each time had to cycle back to T-10 after the aurora went off in the wrong direction or stalled or faded.
Solar Wind Speed Condegram:
Since we closed a little early last night, some of our group went off for a drive today north of Fairbanks and the rocket range. The town of Central, Alaska is about 2 hours north of Fairbanks. The pictures today are from Marc Lessard and Paul Riley’s trip up there today.
In the White Mountains near eagle summit approximately 3400 feet up.
Freezing co-investigator on the way up the White Mountains. Taken right near the end of the tree line.
Super snow removal system, looking South towards Fairbanks.
Going downwards towards Central.
Little Activity, GOES Information: Thursday March 3/Friday March 4
Another exceedingly quiet night with practically no aurora. What little aurora there was was very far to the north and very faint. The problem is that the solar wind pressure on the Earth’s space environment is very very small right now, so not much energy is stored in the magnetosphere and auroras are not triggered.
You can see in the pictures the difference between a weak period and an active one. What the plots show is a measurement by the GOES satellite.
GOES is a geosynchronous spacecraft, which means it has a 24-hour orbit and sits above the same place on Earth all the time. The blue trace is the GOES satellite that is nearest our longitude. Each day, the GOES satellite moves from the dayside (between the earth and the sun) to the nightside (behind the earth) and back. The trace shows the GOES measurement of the Earth’s magnetic field with time. On the dayside, where the solar wind pushes on the Earth’s dipole field, the field is compressed and strengthened. On the nightside, where the solar wind pulls the tail out to many Earth radii, the field is stretched and turned, and GOES measures a smaller signal. When energy is stored in the tail, the tail is stretched out even farther, and the GOES signal drops well below the oscillating daily sinusoid. When the tail is stretched too far, and too much energy is stored, there is a release which triggers aurora. So each sharp upturn in the GOES signal on the nightside corresponds to a nightside aurora at that (our) local time.
If you compare the two plots, you see one is a clean quiet sinusoid: that’s a boring quiet time. The other has lots of dropouts and sharp recoveries: that’s an active time. The two plots are from the week which is one solar rotation before now. You can see that 27 days ago, we moved from a fairly quiet time to a quite active time, so there is a lot of hope that in the next few days we should see quite an increase in the activity. NOAA space weather predictions say that the activity increase should be on Saturday; the straight 27-day cycle puts it on Friday night; we’ll wait and see. The weather remains clear, and the rocket is happy: all we need is some aurora!
No Activity: Wed. March 2/Thu. March 3
Everything was very quiet. The monitors were pretty much flat lined. We’re hoping that the solar wind activity picks up. See the spaceweather links on this page for information about what the solar wind is doing.
Good Conditions, No Launch: Tuesday March 1/Wednesday March 2
Here we see the smaller DUST rocket on the rail.
This was an exciting night but no launch ensued. We had clear weather at both Kaktovic and Poker, so we could see! Also we continue to sit in a high-speed solar wind stream, which provides lots of energy to the magnetosphere. We brought the count down to the T-3min hold point 2 times, first for a substorm that was a little too early in the evening for us (most of the activity was too far to the east), and later for another substorm that never quite developed into anything predictable.
The payload and support systems all worked very smoothly, and the “hot counts” let us sit at T-3minutes until we decided that this was not our event.
The good weather is promised to us again for Wednesday night, and the high speed solar wind should last another day, so we’ll see what happens next.
The pictures today show our engineers and grad students developing a luge run from the TM building to halfway down the (steep and snowy!) hill; the local stores are wondering why people are buying kiddie swimming pools in the middle of winter but apparently they make pretty good sleds.
Pictures from Launch Pad, Snowstorm Prevents Launch: Monday 28 Feb/Tuesday March 1
This is Kristina Lynch, the principal investigator, standing next to the launch pad holding the rocket.
We had a beautiful event come through this evening with a classic substorm signature and very intense activity; however, it was snowing at Poker and a blizzard at Kaktovic so we couldn’t see it optically very well. The fact that we could see it at all through the clouds just brought home the fact of how strong it was. The magnetic and solar wind signatures however were very clear, and the science team used the event as a lesson in when to call the launch: given the indications of an oncoming event, when do you decide to drop below the 10-minute hold point in the countdown? When do you decide to keep going past the 3-minute hold point?
This afternoon there was a trip to the launch pad. The pictures today show just how LARGE this rocket is.
First Night of Window, Required Launch Conditions: Sunday 27 Feb/Monday February 28
This picture shows the launcher holding the cascades rocket.
Tonight was the first night of our available launch window. There was some auroral activity, but it was snowing, which rather gets in the way of aurora viewing… In order to launch the rocket, we need four things to converge at once: (1) good aurora, (2) good weather, (3) a good rocket, and (4) a safe trajectory. Item (4), a safe trajectory, means that there are no Medivac planes in our airspace, no unusual crowds of people near the launch facility, and that road traffic (not that there’s a lot of it) has been stopped near the range. Item (3), a good rocket, is what we’ve been working so hard on for the past weeks and months. The practice count on Friday, the “vertical checks” tonight (checks of the payload and range that mimic the actual countdown) before the window opened, and another, extra “vertical check” during the window tonight (in the snowstorm) have brought us to the point of feeling confident that if items (1) and (2) come together, we are ready to go.
However, we need (2), the weather, to improve: we hope that if not by Monday night at least by Tuesday this low pressure area will go away. And then, we need (1), the good aurora! If you look at the “conde-gram” from yesterday’s update you can see that in a few more days we should have an increase in the auroral activity, based on the solar activity last month.
Tonight, however, we were concentrating on item (3). The vertical check is part of a 3-hour procedure that precedes the window opening each night. “Station checks” at T-3hrs begin a choreographed procedure including balloon and test rocket launches to monitor high-altitude winds, vertical checks of the payload and telemetry systems, and verification of all communications links. It also includes a practice of bringing the count all the way down to T0, to make sure that when the real aurora comes, we are ready for it. With people spread out all over the range, at radar, the blockhouse, telemetry, and science, the practice counts need to be a carefully scripted affair. Communications over the range intercom are conducted by our “operations manager”, Kathe Rich, and each group has a designated person to speak into the intercom. Even when we are just doing practices, it is exciting to approach T0.
This picture shows the area around the science center at the top of the hill, which was severely scarred by fire a few months ago. The picture is of the burned remains of tall pine trees, even though they the picture makes them appear to be much smaller, like grass. The science center was nestled in trees before, and now it appears much more open and has an odd appearance as you drive up the hill.
Science Team, Practice Count: Saturday February 26/Sunday February 27
This picture was taken though the window of the glass observing room by Kyoung-Joo Hwang, a member of the science team.
The engineering crew has the day off, so that means that just the science team is out at the range. The Poker Flat Rocket Range is 30 miles outside of Fairbanks. It was a cloudy night in Fairbanks, but stars could be seen at Poker. The night was used as a “practice count” for the science observations. In order to call the launch, we need to monitor the auroral environment, from the input (solar activity as seen by the ACE satellite), through the Earth’s near-Earth space (the shape of the magnetosphere as seen by the GOES satellite), down to the ground (electric currents across Canada seen by magnetometers (CANOPUS and the Alaska chain), to become aurora as seen by eyes and cameras.
If you were to look at the data from Saturday night you would see that it was a very quiet night. The solar wind speed is slow and there is not much going on. Since solar activity has a 27-day cycle caused by the Sun’s rotation period, we can make a prediction as to when things should pick up; it seems that March 5-10 is our prime time. However, only roughly half of the auroral activity is predictable on a month-to- month basis, so we may be surprised any day! Sunday, is the first official day of our window for launching. The moon is still coming up very early and full, though, so the window is only from 8-10pm; our “normal” windows will run from 9:30-3:30.
Below is a “conde-gram” by Paul Kinter of the solar wind speed (named for Mark Conde who made the first plots like this). This plot shows the periodicity of the solar wind velocity. If you extrapolate the spiral out for a few days you can see that we would expect increased activity around March 5th.
Rockets On Rails: February 25, 2005
The rockets are on the rails and the practice count is finished, so Saturday will be a day off for the engineering crew and Sunday evening will be our first official night of the window. The pictures show the Cascades rocket being mounted on the launch rail. Later in the evening, the house structure was moved back and the rail was raised to a vertical position. After the practice count was finished, stayed at the range and watched the aurora do its stuff.
Payload Assembled: February 24, 2005
The payload has been assembled.
PFFs Installed: February 23, 2005
The PFFs have been mounted in the main payload, and the aft sub is wound and mounted. The forward sub needs to be assembled and added to the stack. The hope is to have the whole payload assembled and on the rail by Friday for the practice count.
Sequence Test Buildup: February 22, 2005
These photos are from the Poker launch site in Alaska. The photos are from the sequence test buildup. The sequence test was done Saturday February 19, and a few minor abnormalities are being investigated. Payload mechanical buildup proceeds over the next few days. The practice count is on Friday and the launch window opens Sunday night.
