UPDATE: The launch of the NASA rocket was postponed to 8:02 p.m. Friday, May 14, according to the Wallops Flight Facility.
Massachusetts residents eagerly waiting to watch a rocket launch the past few days may have to continue their wait.
The liftoff of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration rocket from a Virginia launching site Friday night was postponed three days in a row to Monday night due to weather issues. The mission aims to study Northern Lights-style atmospheric reactions.
“LAUNCH SCRUBBED,” NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility wrote in a tweet. “Tonight’s Black Brant XII sounding rocket carrying the KiNET-X payload has been postponed to no earlier than Monday, May 10, at 8:04 p.m. The launch has been postponed due to upper level winds not being within the required limits for a safe launch.”
As part of its mission, called the KiNETic-scale energy and momentum transport eXperiment, NASA will deploy a Black Brant XII suborbital sounding rocket, which will then release a payload of barium vapor clouds north of Bermuda roughly 9 and half to 10 minutes after liftoff. The goal is to cause a magnetic disturbance, energize electrons and study energy movement in space.
Last month, NASA released an image showing when the rocket is expected be able to be seen after launching from the facility in Wallops Island, Virginia. Throughout southern New England, including in Massachusetts, the liftoff will be able to be viewed 30 to 60 seconds after liftoff.
As far west as Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee, the rocket will show up in the sky 90 to 120 seconds after it launches, according to NASA’s image.
The KiNet-X mission was initially scheduled to start Friday night, but Wallops postponed liftoff to Saturday, as camera stations were looking for clear skies preferably at both the Virginia launching site and Bermuda to view the vapor tracers.
The launch was later rescheduled from Saturday to Sunday “due to upper level winds not being within the required limits for a safe launch,” Wallops wrote in another tweet.
As NASA staff waited for better weather conditions Sunday, they postponed the liftoff to 8:04 p.m. Monday, again because of the upper level winds. Live coverage of the mission will be available on the Wallops IBM video site. Status updates can be found on the facility’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. The launch window will run until 8:43 p.m.
The four-stage rocket will release the barium vapor at an altitude of 217 to 249 over the Atlantic Ocean and 540 to 560 miles downrange from Wallops and just north of Bermuda. The vapors will form two green-violet clouds that may be visible for roughly 30 seconds. The particles aren’t harmful to the environment or public health, NASA said.
Scientists use vapor tracers mainly to study winds in the upper atmosphere. When released after liftoff, the tracers allows NASA staff to observe the winds directly, according to Wallops.
“In general, the human eye does not see violet colors very well in darkness,” the Virginia facility said. “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.”
The administration’s goal with the mission is to study “a very fundamental problem” in space plasmas, namely, how energy and momentum transported between different regions of space are magnetically connected, NASA explained.
Examples of these atmospheric energy movements are auroras, also known as the Northern Lights. These phenomena occur when electrons collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms and molecules in Earth’s upper atmosphere near space.
“The electrons in Earth’s space environment and in the solar wind have relatively low energies. Yet the aurora is generated by very high energy electrons,” said Peter Delamere, KiNET-X principal investigator from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. “What is the energization mechanism?”
Related Content:
- NASA rocket launch to be visible from Massachusetts, much of East Coast and Bermuda; How to watch the liftoff
- 21-ton, 99-foot long Chinese rocket circling planet uncontrolled, could fall to Earth in next few days
- Eta Aquarid meteor shower, space dust from Halley’s Comet, peaks this week; Here’s how to watch it