NASA Rocket To Form Artificial Clouds In Space, To Study Aurora

NASA is reportedly going to launch two sounding rockets to study the localized jets formed by an aurora. The rockets will create artificial white clouds during a 10-minute flight over Alaska.

"Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, explain that electric fields drive the ionosphere, which, in turn, are predicted to setup enhanced neutral winds within an aurora arc," NASA said in a statement. "This experiment seeks to understand the height-dependent processes that create localized neutral jets within the aurora."

The two Black Brant IX rockets have the ability to reach an apogee of 300 kilometers and have a total mass of about 2,200 kilograms. According to NASA, the two rockets will target different altitudes between 50 kilometers and 1,500 kilometers. One rocket will reach about 170 kilometers above the planet Earth, and the other will go up around 323 kilometers.

The lower altitude rocket will let out aluminium vapor, which will have a white appearance and will look like white and luminescent clouds to observers on the ground. The vapor will react with oxygen to create aluminium oxide, carbon dioxide and water, all of which are the atmosphere's naturally occurring constituents and therefore would not create pollution. Researchers will study the cloud of vapor to understand the localized neutral jets that take place within an aurora.

The two rockets will be launched from the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska. Also, the test is going to take place between Feb. 13 and March 3, 2017. The timing of the launch will depend on how clear the skies are and could occur between 7 p.m. and midnight, Alaska Standard Time. The flight will last for 10 minutes and can be viewed online here. Incidentally, NASA is launching a total of five rockets from January to March to explore the aurora and its interaction with the upper atmosphere and ionosphere of the planet Earth.