January 16, 2004
Hi!
This will be just a short report, as we are
stopping early today in order to be able to
report for station time at 0200UT (3am). We had
a practice science run this morning, and a practice
count for the rocket later in the day. Overall
things went smoothly, though we had some difficulties
getting GPS transmissions through the styrofoam
"house"; they have had to cut holes through it
to compensate it. This required lowering and elevating
the launch rail several times, but all seems to
be well now.
The excitement for the day was the discovery of
recent (lunchtime) polar bear tracks across the
driveway to the launcher building. One of the
motor crew measured the footprints to be
about 12" across....they look fake but I am
assured they are real.
Tomorrow morning (late tonight?) we start our
first real countdown. There are 3 hours of
preparatory checks, and then the window opens
at 0500UT. The science team will be watching various
monitors from satellites and ground-based monitors,
particularly the EISCAT radars. The first requirement,
however, is that the solar wind be able to pump energy
into the near-Earth environment, and it can only do
this in an efficient way if "Bz is south", that is,
the magnetic field embedded in the solar wind local
to the Earth is pointed southward. You can monitor
this real-time by looking at data from the ACE satellite:
http://sel.noaa.gov/ace/MAG_SWEPAM_6h.html
If the red line (Bz) is below zero for several hours
(or preferably many hours) then lots of energy is
getting pumped in and the overall activity level of
aurora, etc, goes up. Given lots of activity in
general, and some 6300 aurora (soft, or red, aurora),
then we can start looking in specific for the events
we want. I'll post some data links on the "interactive,
comments, questions, and further information" page
on the Dartmouth web site.
You can see a picture of one of the polar
bear footprints, and of the rocket on the
elevated launch rail, at:
http://www.rocketrange.no/campaigns/completed/sersio_2004/040116/status.html
http://www.rocketrange.no/campaigns/completed/sersio_2004/040116/DSCF0005_resize.JPG
http://www.rocketrange.no/campaigns/completed/sersio_2004/040116/DSCF0153_resize.JPG
-K
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