The KiNET-X experiment
It's a brief and ambitious night flight above the Atlantic Ocean
We will be picking up the count in just a few moments, picking the count at 8:34 with an estimated T-0, or launch time, of 8:44 p.m. Eastern. There is a possibility we will hold again at T-minus three minutes. That has not been determined yet. We’re counting down and, again, crossing fingers that that will not have to be the case.
THE KiNET-X EXPERIMENT would have NASA launch one of its largest sounding rockets on an arc into the ionosphere to create a small plasma cloud that would interact with the existing plasma of space.
Earth, like most planets in our solar system, has its own magnetic field and its own plasma, up in the ionosphere and largely created by solar radiation ionizing atmospheric particles. Plasma, considered the fourth state of matter, is a mixture of free electrons and ions and accounts for 99% of the visible universe.
The sun also projects its own plasma, known as the solar wind. This solar plasma — mostly charged hydrogen and helium atoms — travels outward from the sun following the star’s far-reaching magnetic field lines.
Illustration shows the projected flight path of NASA's BlackBrant XII rocket carrying the KiNET-X experiment. Image courtesy of Peter Delamere.
The NASA rocket carrying KiNET-X would rise over the Atlantic Ocean into the ionosphere and release two canisters of barium thermite that would then detonate, injecting that barium perpendicular to the magnetic field at about 5,500 mph.
The first injection would occur at about 249 miles altitude and the second one moments later on the downward trajectory at about 186 miles altitude, near Bermuda. The rocket would finish its work and end up in the Atlantic.
Sunlight would convert the barium into an ionized plasma. The goal was for each of the two barium plasma clouds to produce an electric field parallel to Earth’s magnetic field and to thereby create the experiment’s necessary Alfvén waves.
Why such a short launch window around dusk each day? Because sunlight was needed for ionizing the barium, but some level of darkness was needed for viewing the colorful ionized clouds.
Instruments on board the rocket would measure ion cloud density and distribution, high-frequency waves, electron temperature, field-aligned electrons, the strength and direction of magnetic and electric fields, and ion characteristics.
This image shows the projected viewing area of the rocket launch.
“The beauty of KiNET-X is that it was an active experiment,” said Robert Pfaff, space scientist in the Space Weather Laboratory in the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “We were actually doing an experiment in space.”
Pfaff, who has worked with Delamere and Hampton on several experiments at NASA, was in charge of several Goddard instruments on the rocket.
Scientists frequently use a chamber for a plasma experiment. These chambers come in many types — vacuum, magnetic field, radio and microwave, for example — and allow researchers to set the parameters to see how a plasma behaves.
As important as chambers are for research, however, they don’t show scientists the natural occurrence.
“Doing the experiment in space means you don't have any walls,” said Pfaff, who has led Goddard’s Electric Field Investigation Team since joining NASA in 1985. “You can actually see how things propagate and see how the electric fields evolve.”
The experiment included several other Geophysical Institute space and plasma scientists: Project co-investigator Don Hampton, a research associate professor, was in Bermuda for ground observations; Mark Conde, a space physics professor, and Antonius Otto, an emeritus professor of plasma physics, monitored the experiment from Fairbanks. Research associate professor Peter Damiano assisted with results analysis.
Three UAF students doing their doctoral research at the Geophysical Institute also participated. Matthew Blandin supported optical operations at Wallops Flight Facility, Kylee Branning operated cameras on a NASA Gulfstream III aircraft out of Langley Research Center, also in Virginia, and Nathan Barnes assisted with computer modeling.
In addition to Pfaff from NASA, the experiment also included researchers and equipment from several universities: physics professor Kristina Lynch and graduate student Magda Moses, both of Dartmouth College; research professor Marc Lessard and research scientist Chrystal Moser-Gauthier, both of the University of New Hampshire; and research professor emeritus Miguel Larsen of Clemson University.
