Rocket KiNET-X Launch: NASA Wallops Island Saturday Night

Saturday May 8 2021

At last check, NASA is a GO for the rocket launch tonight at 8:02 PM. This was postponed from Friday due to weather. Despite regional showers, thunder, and widespread hail during the afternoon, the sky is expected to clear for this mission.

🚨 BREAKING 🚨
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LAUNCH SCRUBBED ❗ Tonight’s sounding rocket launch has been postponed to no earlier than 8:03 p.m., Sunday, May 9.

The launch has been postponed due to upper level winds not being within the required limits for a safe launch. The launch window for Sunday runs until 8:43 p.m.

Launch Forecast Cloud Cover

Rocket Viewing

This is the launch, visible shorty after lift off.

This is a fast, sounding rocket. It will be heading towards Bermuda.

If the sky is clear to your east/southeast, then you may see this within 1 minute across much of our region as seen in this map.

The main show will start 9 minutes later.

Vapor Tracers: What You May See

About 9 minutes after launch, the payload of vape tracers will be released,

217 to 249 miles above the ground of Bermuda.

This made up of the same material in fireworks, so not harmful to the environment.

FACE SOUTHEAST:

If you know where the sun has been rising recently, it will be a little to the ‘right’ of that along the horizon.

The ‘light’ show is expected at 8:11 PM, if the launch is on time.

Barium Vapor:

This will form two green-violet clouds that may be visible for about 30 seconds.

Scientists use vapor tracers primarily to study atmospheric winds in upper atmosphere and ionosphere. When released after launch, the tracers make it possible to directly observe the winds.

What is this? Mission KiNETic- X

A study of a problem with space plasmas how energy and momentum are transported between different regions of space that are magnetically connected.

Similar to Auroras seen on Earth with energy ejected form the sun.

“The electrons in Earth’s space environment and in the solar wind have relatively low energies. Yet the aurora is generated by very high energy electrons. What is the energization mechanism?” said Peter Delamere, KiNET-X principal investigator from the University of Alaska – Fairbanks.

What Will Happen:

Two barium vapor clouds emitted from the rocket’s payload will generate a magnetic field perturbation, and electrons are likely to be energized.

From NASA

The KiNet-X experiment consists of a single rocket launch carrying seven separable payloads. Diagnostic instrumentation is carried on the main payload and four small subpayloads, while the barium vapor clouds will be released from two additional larger subpayloads.

This allows for a multiple-point view of the disturbances created by the barium vapor releases.

The four small subpayloads, nicknamed “Bobs”, each about the size of a two-liter soda bottle, make measurements of the space environment through which the barium-vapor-induced disturbance travels.

The barium vapor, which is not harmful to the environment or public health, is not expected to form highly visible colorful clouds common to past missions from Wallops using vapor tracers.

The vapor will be released approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds to around 10 minutes after launch at about 217-249 miles altitude over the Atlantic Ocean and 540-560 miles downrange from Wallops and just north of Bermuda.

After exposure to sunlight the vapor clouds quickly ionize and take on a violet color. Immediately after release of the vapor, the spherical clouds are a mixture of green and violet, but that phase only lasts about 30 seconds when the un-ionized component of the cloud has diffused away.

The ionized portion of the cloud becomes tied to the magnetic field lines and diffuses parallel to the field lines but not perpendicular to it. In the mid-Atlantic region latitudes, the field lines are inclined by about 45 degrees to the horizontal, so the violet clouds stretch out in a slanted orientation and look more like short trails than a cloud.

Because the motion of the neutral portion of the clouds is not constrained by the magnetic field lines, they spread out more quickly and become too thin to see with the naked eye much sooner than the ionized component.

In general, the human eye does not see violet colors very well in darkness. The KiNET-X clouds will therefore be more difficult for the casual observer to see than some of the previous vapor missions.

Live coverage of the mission will be available on the Wallops IBM video site (previously Ustream) beginning at 7:30 p.m. on launch day.

The NASA Visitor Center at Wallops will not be open for launch viewing.

Message From

Keith Koehler

NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia

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Sunshine State Of Mind

I am done with the cold and snow (for the season). I am embracing my wife’s mantra of Sunshine State of Mind.

This was designed by Shannon Berk and we will be wearing it through spring and to the beach.

Double Benefit: Proceeds will be split between our nonprofit Just In Power Kids and the development of my new weather website. That has been scheduled to be ready to launch in May.