For Immediate Release

Five NASA rockets are scheduled to launch from Poker Flat Research Range this month. The launch window opens today, Jan. 10, at 10 p.m. AST, and runs until 4 a.m. AST, each night through Wednesday, Jan. 27. The five rockets will launch in two separate campaigns.

Marc Lessard is the principal investigator of the first campaign, dubbed ROPA, short for Rocket Observation for Pulsating Aurora that will send a large Black Brant XII sounding rocket through pulsating aurora north of Fairbanks, Alaska.

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Students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks are collaborating with students from Toyama Prefectural University and Tokai University in Japan to prepare a rocket scheduled to launch from Poker Flat Research Range on March 4th.

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Students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks are collaborating with students from Toyama Prefectural University and Tokai University in Japan to prepare a rocket scheduled to launch from Poker Flat Research Range on March 11. The launch was originally scheduled for March 4, but was delayed to allow time for the students to finetune their payload equipment.

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Students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have collaborated with students from Toyama Prefectural University and Tokai University in Japan to prepare a rocket that successfully launched from Poker Flat Research Range Monday afternoon at 12:06 p.m.

FAIRBANKS, Alaska—A total of eight National Aeronautics and Space Administration sounding rockets will launch from Poker Flat Research Range in 2009. The rocket season is split into two launch windows. The first launch window opens Jan. 10, and will remain open until Feb. 5, 2009.

The first window will see the launch of three rockets as part of two separate missions. One mission will aid scientists’ study of the ionosphere, while the other will gather data on the structure of auroral arcs.

Seven rockets carrying experiments used to study the aurora are scheduled for launch from Poker Flat Research Range this winter. The projects include a group of four rockets launched in rapid succession to measure wind in the upper atmosphere and one rocket that will turn on its side mid-flight, allowing it to pierce a curtain of aurora horizontally.

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Four rockets are scheduled to launch from Poker Flat when aurora conditions are suitable at night or in early morning hours this January.

Three of these rockets will release brilliant blue-green chemical trails to trace wind in the upper atmosphere. The trails are expected to be visible from Fairbanks, North Pole, locations north of the Brooks Range and as far east as the Canadian border.

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A single sounding rocket is scheduled to launch in January from Poker Flat Research Range when weather and aurora conditions are suitable. The rocket, a Black Brant XII, is part of an experiment designed to show how the aurora affects radio signals such as Global Positioning System (GPS) signals.

The rocket will be launched 700 km high through a bright and active aurora display, and will land in the Arctic Ocean. Once in flight, the rocket will release three payloads in a triangular configuration.

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Eleven rockets are scheduled for launch from Poker Flat Research Range this winter, with projects ranging from four rockets launched in rapid succession to measure wind in the upper atmosphere in January to an internationally collaborative student rocket launch in March.

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Scientists believed comets were filled with ice, dust and perhaps the building blocks of life, but traditionally their make-up had been a mystery. It wasn’t until the 2005 NASA Deep Impact mission that scientists were finally allowed their first peek inside a comet.