Press Releases
Four rockets are scheduled to launch from Poker Flat when aurora conditions are suitable at night or in early morning hours this February.
Three of the 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. 
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.
A sub-orbital sounding rocket is scheduled to launch in February from Poker Flat Research Range when the weather is clear and aurora conditions are active. The rocket, a Black Brant XII, will capture measurements to deduce characteristics about the processes that create the aurora. The project is called the Rocket Auroral Correlator Experiment (RACE).
The total number of rockets launching from Poker Flat Research Range this season has recently been revised from thirteen to eleven. The reduction is due to the cancellation of a guided rocket project previously scheduled for April that will no longer launch from Poker Flat.
A single, four-stage sounding rocket successfully launched into the aurora at 11:23 p.m. on Sunday, January 13 from Poker Flat Research Range. The rocket, a Black Brant XII, is part of an experiment designed to use Global Positioning System (GPS) radio signals to understand how oxygen emitted from the aurora triggers the expansion of the ionosphere into space, resulting in the formation of radiation belts.
Four rockets are scheduled to launch from Poker Flat when aurora conditions are suitable at night or in early morning hours this January.
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.
Some places in this world are just too dirty, dull or dangerous for human pilots to fly. An airspace in the latter category is anywhere near gas flares in Alaska’s oilfields. With only a few seconds of warning, flames blast high in the air from a network of pipes, releasing the stress of sucking oil from deep in the ground.
VENETIE — The cozy log structure smells of coffee, gasoline, and spruce logs burning in a stove made from a 55-gallon drum. Inside the building that serves as the Village Council headquarters for Venetie, Josh Bundick explains a new policy that rewards villagers who find spent rocket parts launched from north of Fairbanks.
Following up on a NASA promise to recover spent rocket parts scattered for decades across northern Alaska, workers for Poker Flat Research Range recovered more than 7,000 pounds of debris from 17 different sites in 2012.
