Two
suborbital rockets were successfully launched 15 seconds apart
Thursday morning from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility as part of a
study of electrical currents in the ionosphere.
The
launch of the Black Brant V at 10:31:25 a.m. EDT and the
Terrier-Improved Orion at 10:31:40 were part of the Daytime Dynamo
experiment, a joint project between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
The
project is designed to study a global electrical current called the
dynamo, which sweeps through the ionosphere. The first rocket carried
a payload that collected data on the neutral and charged particles in
the ionosphere. The second rocket released a long trail of lithium
gas to track how the upper atmospheric wind varies with altitude.
These winds are believed to be the drivers of the dynamo currents.
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