The 2026 Poker Flat Research Range launch season opened this week with the first of three missions studying the aurora and the upper atmosphere. The first mission, PolarNOx, hadits initial launch opportunity at 4:20 a.m. Friday morning. Crews arrived late Thursday at Poker Flat, which is owned by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. […]
A NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket soared high out of Poker Flat Research Range north of Fairbanks at 2:27 a.m. Saturday to learn more about pulsating aurora. The Loss through Auroral Microburst Pulsations, or LAMP, experiment seeks to determine whether the pulsating aurora is connected to another phenomenon called microbursts, higher-energy electrons from the Earth’s magnetosphere driven […]
NASA’s annual maintenance visits to Poker Flat Research Range have resumed after a year off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with big projects this year including removal of a little-used launcher and the transfer of one radar to another facility. One crew has finished its work and departed. That crew focused on the launch facility’s […]
In cold, dry, subarctic air, a rocket taller than a house tilts northward, awaiting the moment when a person inside a nearby concrete building pushes a button. The ink-black Chatanika River valley will then flash white, and erupt with a clap of thunder. A slender NASA vehicle will shoot skyward, carrying a sensitive instrument […]