POKER FLAT RESEARCH RANGE — Under a bluebird sky and perched above a resilient winter snowpack, two sounding rockets point upward, ready to blast through the thickness of our atmosphere to gain a better look at the sun. Inside a building on this sprawling complex within the Chatanika River valley north of Fairbanks are two […]
UNITED NATIONS — The United States accused North Korea on Monday of using the prohibited launch of a military spy satellite to try to advance its nuclear weapons program, a charge Pyongyang denied. “The DPRK is unabashedly trying to advance its nuclear weapons delivery systems by testing ballistic missile technology in clear violation of this council’s […]
The second NASA sounding rocket of the season headed into Earth’s upper atmosphere from Poker Flat Research Range shortly after midnight Thursday, carrying a payload of science instruments. It was the second launch in two nights at the rocket range, owned by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute and operated under a contract with NASA’s Wallops Flight […]
A two-stage NASA sounding rocket flew skyward shortly after midnight Wednesday carrying science instruments to gather data about the solar wind’s behavior. The experiment, named Dissipation, is aimed at learning how charged solar wind particles dissipate their energy in the high-latitude ionosphere-thermosphere. That region is about 62 to 186 miles above the surface and at latitudes above 65 […]