A four-stage Black Brant XII sounding rocket.
Credits: NASA
Posted on 05/06/2021 8:11:19 PM PDT by BenLurkin
A mission to explore energy transport in space using a NASA suborbital sounding rocket launching May 8, 2021, from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia may provide a brief light show for residents of the eastern United States and Bermuda.
The mission is scheduled for no earlier than 8:02 p.m. EDT with a 40-minute launch window, Saturday, May 8. Backup launch days run through May 16. The launch may be visible, weather permitting, in much of the eastern United States from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River.
A four-stage Black Brant XII rocket will be used for the mission that includes the release of barium vapor that will form two green-violet clouds that may be visible for about 30 seconds. The barium vapor is not harmful to the environment or public health
The mission, called the KiNETic-scale energy and momentum transport eXperiment, or KiNet-X, is designed to study a very fundamental problem in space plasmas, namely, how are energy and momentum transported between different regions of space that are magnetically connected?
The vapor will be released approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds to around 10 minutes after launch at about 217-249 miles altitude over the Atlantic Ocean and 540-560 miles downrange from Wallops and just north of Bermuda.
A four-stage Black Brant XII sounding rocket.
Credits: NASA
Immediately after release of the vapor, the spherical clouds are a mixture of green and violet, but that phase only lasts about 30 seconds when the un-ionized component of the cloud has diffused away. After exposure to sunlight the vapor clouds quickly ionize and take on a violet color.
The ionized portion of the cloud becomes tied to the magnetic field lines and diffuses parallel to the field lines but not perpendicular to it. In the mid-Atlantic region latitudes, the field lines are inclined by about 45 degrees to the horizontal, so the violet clouds stretch out in a slanted orientation and look more like short trails than a cloud. Because the motion of the neutral portion of the clouds is not constrained by the magnetic field lines, they spread out more quickly and become too thin to see with the naked eye much sooner than the ionized component.
In general, the human eye does not see violet colors very well in darkness. The KiNET-X clouds will therefore be more difficult for the casual observer to see than some of the previous vapor missions launched from Wallops.
Live coverage of the mission will be available on the Wallops IBM video site (previously Ustream) beginning at 7:40 p.m. on launch day. Launch status updates can be found on the Wallops Facebook and Twitter sites.
The NASA Visitor Center at Wallops will not be open for launch viewing.
If the time of day is right I can see launches from Vandenberg AFB here in the eastern suburbs of Phoenix (apprx 500 miles away). Pretty cool.
Takes a good 45-60 seconds after launch before its visible.
Rocket in the Sky plus Accident
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff7wbSwTuEk
Was stationed at VandyLand long ago. Been down in the undergrounds launch control sending missiles up through the silohs. It’s a trip.
Picture a giant steel ball underground with a 3-foot thick bank vault door you got to duck through to get in. Platform inside suspended by giant shock absorbers. In there for hours, door shut. Then....countown, launch. Big boom as blat door is blown on top of siloh, then loud rumble and off it goes, a few dozen feet from you.
Like a sci fi movie.
Sounds intense and fun
I slept on top of nuke & conventional torpedos in my berth in the torpedo room. Actually shot a few dummy torpedos in practice.
Also operated the launcher control panel for the 15 ICBM Poseidon Missiles we had on board but never shot a dummy one of those.
A few years ago, we were visiting friends in Maricopa. We were in their back yard in the evening darkness and my view was to the west. I saw a yellowish cloud that started growing. We were all looking at it then and it continued to grow. The only thing we could think it might be was a launch from Vandenberg. Being former Californians, we were really surprised that we were able to see the launch from Arizona. Our suspicions were supported by a story, with video, on the news that night.
When the sun is down in Phx, but still not too far down, it can back light the exhaust gases quite dramatically.
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