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Poker Flat Gets a Face Lift

A launcher enclosure to be built this summer on Pad 4 (left) is the final project in a six-year, $19 million upgrade to turn the range into an international center for space and environmental research in the Arctic.

A $1 million launcher enclosure to be built this summer is the last major construction project scheduled for the upgrade program, which started in 1990 with funds from the National Aeronautic and Space Administration's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

The new launcher enclosure will provide a climate-controlled environment so rocket motors and payloads designed to carry delicate instruments into space can be kept warm during assembly.

Funds from the upgrade program also were used to build the recently completed T. Neil Davis Science Operations Center, a facility dedicated to the first director of Poker Flat. The center operates as the principle data gathering and observing facility at the range and as the rocket science command center.

It also will contain a high-tech classroom in which students can learn about the aurora. Funds to set up the classroom were donated recently by Asahi Breweries, Limited, a private company in Japan.

In addition, a special room within the center is being designed to serve as the primary monitoring point for a suite of instruments owned by the Communications Research Laboratory of Japan.

CRL has agreed to send about $10 million worth of equipment to Poker Flat during the next 10 years to study the hard-to-reach middle atmosphere, which contains the ozone layer, night-shining clouds, and other possible indicators of global climate change.

The first of the CRL instruments to arrive at the range is a large riometer antenna array, which consists of 256 antenna elements designed to monitor the aurora and other conditions in the middle atmosphere.

Two more CRL instruments--a millimeter wave radiometer that will measure ozone and trace gases, and a partial reflection radar to measure electron density associated with the aurora--are scheduled to arrive at the range within the next two years.

Data from all of the CRL instruments will be transmitted into the science operations center, then to the Data Analysis Center in the Geophysical Institute, according to Stan Schwafel, assistant director of Poker Flat.

"Ultimately, we want to make the data accessible over the Internet so it can be analyzed in real-time directly by scientists in Japan," Schwafel said.

NEW RIOMETER---Instrument Technician DuWayne Bostow and Professor of Physics Roger Smith (above) inspect the range's new riometer antenna array sent by the Japanese Communications Research Laboratory. CRL has agreed to send about $10 million worth of equipment to the range during the next 10 years to monitor the middle atmosphere.

ARCTIC CENTER---Geophysical Institute Director Syun Akasofu is pictured at right inside the T. Neil Davis Science Operations Center (left), the principle data gathering and observing facility at Poker Flat Research Range. Poker Flat Research Range is nearing the end of a six-year $19 million upgrade program and the beginning of a new era as an international center for space and environmental research in the Arctic. Photos by Evelyn Trabant.