Popular Science Talk

Another rocket over the Greenland Sea – The C-REX II sounding rocket mission

Presented by Donald Hampton, Research Associate Prof., Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

As the final rocket of the Grand Cusp Challenge, the C-REX II mission is designed to understand the causes of an upwelling in Earth’s upper atmosphere (the thermosphere) associated with the magnetic cusp. The upwelling is persistent and significant, increasing the local density at satellite altitudes by up to 40%. However there has been no widely explanation for what can provide the energy needed to sustain this upwelling. The mission includes tracer clouds that will be visible across Svalbard, as well as on-board instruments to measure the in-situ plasma and neutral characteristics. I’ll discuss the science, the rocket, the ground based observations and how you can see and take pictures of the releases