Home > Rockets > Cascades > Updates > Tuesday March 1/Wednesday March 2

CASCADES - Update - Tuesday March 1/Wednesday March 2

Here we see the smaller DUST rocket on the rail.

This was an exciting night but no launch ensued. We had clear weather at both Kaktovic and Poker, so we could see! Also we continue to sit in a high-speed solar wind stream, which provides lots of energy to the magnetosphere. We brought the count down to the T-3min hold point 2 times, first for a substorm that was a little too early in the evening for us (most of the activity was too far to the east), and later for another substorm that never quite developed into anything predictable.

The payload and support systems all worked very smoothly, and the "hot counts" let us sit at T-3minutes until we decided that this was not our event.

The good weather is promised to us again for Wednesday night, and the high speed solar wind should last another day, so we'll see what happens next.

The pictures today show our engineers and grad students developing a luge run from the TM building to halfway down the (steep and snowy!) hill; the local stores are wondering why people are buying kiddie swimming pools in the middle of winter but apparently they make pretty good sleds.