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Just south of the Arctic Circle, a research range sits comfortably in the snowy foothills of Alaska’s White Mountains. Known for its sparse population, preponderance of auroral activity, and leagues of undeveloped natural beauty, this spot is ideal for certain kinds of research – specifically ones that roar high into the sky.

 

Poker Flat Research Range, owned and operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute under contract with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, is known primarily for launching sounding rockets. These rockets – basically flying tubes of scientific instruments – soar into different levels of the atmosphere to take in situ measurements that are difficult to obtain through other methods. This month, one mission – named Dissipation – could have exciting implications for NASA’s Geospace Dynamics Constellation (GDC) mission.

 

With a launch window that opened on Nov. 5, the Dissipation team waited for the skies to clear and the dancing lights of the aurora to be present. They wanted to study how energy from the magnetosphere dissipates in the upper atmosphere in the forms of heat and visible light. A sky with active auroras is one of the best indicators that conditions in the ionosphere and thermosphere were just right for launch.

 

The engineers, scientists, and technicians built pieces of the rocket at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia. The pieces were then shipped to Alaska to be fully assembled and calibrated for launch in the payload assembly building at Poker Flat Research Range. After assembly and calibration, the rocket was transferred to a cart and taken to the rocket assembly building, where technicians added the rocket’s solid-fuel propulsion. Then, it was wheeled out to the launch pad to be readied for the dress rehearsal.

 

Mehdi Benna, aeronomist and planetary scientist for the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, is the principal investigator for both GDC’s MoSAIC (Modular Spectrometer for Atmosphere and Ionosphere Characterization) instrument and for Dissipation, which launched an engineering model of MoSAIC into the skies above Alaska. 

In an interview with the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), Benna said Dissipation is particularly exciting because it is a pathfinder for MoSAIC, and will provide a focused look at some of the phenomena that GDC will study in-depth. Phenomena like Joule heating, which is a process that occurs in the atmosphere when currents from the magnetosphere drive positively-charged ions to collide with neutral gases, releasing energy in the form of heat. 

According to Mehda, Dissipation “will give us an early taste of what the GDC data will look like.”

 

Team members drove approximately 30 miles every day from Fairbanks to Poker Flat. Since rockets at Poker are almost exclusively launched during the winter months, these drives can be treacherous – from snowy, white-out conditions to black ice to moose ambling across the highways. One thing is certain, though: the views are always spectacular.

 

It is standard practice at Poker Flat for rockets to be encapsulated in styrofoam once assembled and brought out to the launch pad. The styrofoam insulates the rocket and protects the sensitive instruments on board from the precipitation and extreme cold that Alaskan winters tend to offer. A heating element also ensures temperatures inside the styrofoam casing stay around a balmy 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

In a sounding rocket mission, there are two main teams: the rocket team and the science team. Members of the rocket team go through their checklist of requirements, ensuring instruments are working correctly and the rocket is armed, vertical, and ready for launch, but it’s ultimately up to the science team to give the final approval for launch. For Dissipation, atmospheric activity was monitored in three locations in Alaska: Poker Flat, Venetie, and Toolik. The rocket would be launching at an 84-degree angle, shooting up to 200 miles (350 kilometers) in the sky, and eventually returning to Earth a couple hundred miles north where it would then be retrieved.

 

Poker Flat Research Range features a lidar (light detection and ranging) facility that can measure atmospheric conditions at various altitudes. The range uses two types of lidar systems: a green, single-beam laser for measurements of wind vs altitude by looking at Rayleigh scattering (electromagnetic radiation dispersion due to tiny, sub-wavelength particles) and a three-pronged, yellow-orange laser looking specifically at the density, movement, and temperature of sodium in the atmosphere. The lidar research team turned on its systems to collect simultaneous data of the atmosphere during Dissipation’s launch window.

 

Just after midnight on Nov. 11, a geomagnetic substorm caused a burst of auroral activity above all three locations the science team was monitoring. A weather balloon was launched to ensure safe wind conditions, and the countdown began from four minutes, thirty seconds!

 

Just outside the science operation center, people gathered on a catwalk to watch the rocket launch. They could hear the countdown from the telemetry building down the road through the radio. “T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven….” As soon as the voice on the radio hit zero, the faraway launch pad filled the hills and valley with a bright yellow glow, and the rocket was, well, rocketing into the sky. A few seconds later, the explosion of sound reached the catwalk, rumbling the chests of the onlookers. They watched the first stage of the Oriole II rocket burn out and detach, and the second stage light up half a second later. The rocket disappeared into the night sky, leaving a trail of smoke eventually swallowed by the aurora.

 

A sounding rocket mission isn’t over after the rocket launches, however. 

Once the booster separates from the rest of the rocket, the team waits anxiously to learn if their onboard instruments deployed correctly and can gather and send data. Thankfully, Dissipation’s instruments deployed and worked beautifully, streaming real-time information indicating the rocket was, indeed, flying through a substorm. The team excitedly monitored incoming data for the duration of the flight – about 30 minutes total – from multiple screens. But tensions rose once more as the group waited for confirmation from the telemetry team that the rocket’s parachute deployed, the GPS locator was working as expected, and the payload carrying MoSAIC had landed. 

A cheer erupted from the group as soon as they learned the rocket hit the ground safely: Dissipation was a success! All that was left was to retrieve MoSAIC, collect the rocket parts, and analyze the data to better understand our dynamic atmosphere.

By Rachel Lense
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. 

The final two investigations for the Geospace Dynamics Constellation mission—or GDC—have been selected. NASA recently announced that the Thermal Plasma Sensor (TPS)—led by Phillip Anderson from the University of Texas, Dallas, and the Near Earth Magnetometer Instrument in a Small Integrated System (NEMISIS)—led by Mark Moldwin from the University of Michigan, will join the GDC mission and deliver instruments for integration on the GDC spacecraft. Learn more.

By Denise Hill
NASA Headquarters, Washington

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Independent Review Board under contract to NASA has completed its assessment of the overall architecture and technical concept for the Geospace Dynamics Constellation mission, or GDC. The Board’s report and NASA’s response have been published.

NASA asked the Independent Review Board to review GDC’s overall architecture and technical concept, focusing on three specific points:

1. Are the scope, cost, and schedule understood and properly aligned?
2. Is the management approach and structure adequate for a project of this scope and complexity?
3. Are the GDC science team and the planned collaborations structured and focused to maximize the return on NASA’s investment, both scientifically and for potential contributions to national interests?

The Independent Review Board included experts from the scientific and technical communities who have deep experience with spaceflight missions and space weather activities. The assessment took just over three months and was performed via plenary sessions, subpanels, interviews, attendance at community meetings, and one-on-one interviews with project personnel and other key stakeholders.

View the full report and NASA’s response.

Findings

The Independent Review Board concluded that NASA’s implementation of GDC addresses the primary recommendations in the 2013–2022 Decadal Survey in Solar and Space Physics and is strongly supported by the heliophysics community and the broader national community of stakeholders.

The Independent Review Board also found that the unprecedented observations this mission will make will enhance our understanding of prevailing space weather conditions in the ionosphere-thermosphere system on local, regional, and global scales. These measurements will lead to improvements in ionosphere-thermosphere models that are foundational for better understanding of near-Earth space, as well as improve space weather prediction.

Recommendations

The Independent Review Board made 12 recommendations, which cover topics such as project cost and schedule, strategic communication, and inter-agency collaborations.

It determined the current budget for GDC does not support the mission’s schedule to be ready to launch in 2029 and is not sufficient for the mission’s scope. The Independent Review Board found the 2029 launch readiness date logistically viable, but without additional funding, the mission would have to wait until at least 2032 to launch, which would lead to additional costs. In order to reduce risk and uncertainty, it recommended GDC’s funding and phasing be corrected to better align with development plans.

Citing GDC’s importance to national interests and scientific advancements, it recommended increased coordination and collaboration with scientific and operational partners as part of a larger NASA strategy.

NASA’s response to these and the other recommendations can be found in the document linked above.

 NASA’s Response

The Independent Review Board’s report and NASA’s response to the recommendations have been published.

NASA’s Heliophysics Division also will hold a virtual town hall at 1 p.m. EDT, Monday, Oct. 24, where Division staff will provide the community with a status update, including discussions about the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033 and other exciting endeavors, such as the Heliophysics Big Year. During the town hall, the Independent Review Board’s findings and recommendations for GDC, as well as NASA’s plans to address them, will be discussed.

Members of the science community, academia, media, and public are invited to join the discussion: https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/virtual-townhall

By Denise Hill
NASA Headquarters, Washington

 

 

 

 

On April 10, 2022, NASA chartered an Independent Review Board to review the overall architecture and technical concept for NASA’s Geospace Dynamics Constellation, or GDC – a mission to study how the giant magnetic bubble around Earth, the magnetosphere, interacts with Earth’s upper atmosphere.

NASA regularly uses such review boards to review strategic missions for robustness and to ensure maximum return on NASA’s investment.

GDC is a NASA Heliophysics mission that will observe the coupling between Earth’s magnetosphere and the ionosphere-thermosphere system – and how that coupled system responds to energy streaming in from the Sun and the rest of space. GDC will be the first mission to study these effects on a global scale by using a constellation of spacecraft that will allow for concurrent, multi-point observations.

The Independent Review Board is tasked with providing an assessment and recommendations that maximize the probability of mission success – scientifically and technically – as well as how best to enhance the larger NASA heliophysics portfolio. The board comprises experts in relevant science, technical, and programmatic fields and is expected to produce a final report and conclude its work around August 2022. Orlando Figueroa, retired deputy center director for science and technology at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Maura E. Hagan, professor emeritus of physics at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, were selected as co-chairs to lead the board and together offer decades of experience in ionosphere-thermosphere system research and NASA program leadership.

The Geospace Dynamics Constellation mission – or GDC – is a team of satellites that will study Earth’s upper atmosphere and provide the first direct global measurements of our planet’s dynamic and complex interface with the space environment. This boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space is called the ionosphere-thermosphere (I-T) system.

This mission will change our understanding of the structure and behavior of the I-T, specifically how it responds to energy input from the Sun and space environment above and the lower atmosphere below, and how it internally redistributes this energy on a global basis. The processes and dynamics active in this region are involved in many of the space weather effects we experience on Earth, such as disrupted communications and navigation signals, satellite orbit disruptions, and certain triggered power outages.

Using an array of sensors on each spacecraft, working together to gather comprehensive observations, GDC will explore the fundamental physics of this region, which is driven on all scales from minutes to years by a variety of external factors. The level of detail and resolution provided by this mission will give us an unprecedented understanding of the space environment surrounding our home planet and will grant us new insights into the fundamental dynamics of planetary atmospheres within the solar system and beyond.

GDC will also provide the first opportunity to study I-T physics on a range of scales from small (similar to thunderstorms), medium (similar to hurricanes), to global scales (similar to jet streams, polar vortices, etc.). The new and comprehensive measurements GDC will provide are critically needed to increase our understanding of the upper atmosphere and to understand this region as both a collection of distinct parts and a system that acts and reacts as a whole.  Ultimately, GDC’s science investigation will lead to improvements in our ability to specify and forecast space weather effects on a global basis.

The GDC mission is currently in formulation and NASA has started assembling the GDC science team with the selection of three GDC Interdisciplinary Scientists: Dr. Rebecca Bishop (The Aerospace Corporation), Professor Yue Deng (University of Texas, Arlington), and Professor Jeffrey Thayer (University of Colorado, Boulder). Each leads teams that will bring their own unique capabilities and contributions to the mission. In early 2022, NASA will select the rest of the science team and the instruments that will fly on the GDC spacecraft.

By Denise Hill
NASA Headquarters, Washington