The Poker Flat Research Range near Fairbanks saw its first launch of the year on Jan. 30, at the crack of dawn.
Several hours before go-time, in a warm office building inside the sprawling facility, a group of Virginia Tech scientists were hurriedly calibrating equipment, scribbling equations on dry erase boards and burning lots and lots of "rocket fuel," as graduate researcher Sowmya Muthurangan called it.
"Doughnuts and coffee," she said. "It is fundamental. Absolutely fundamental."
The breakroom table was stacked with boxes of doughnuts, all of them either pink or sprinkled with pink. The researchers said when it comes to rocketry, the devil's in the details — and the doughnuts must be pink on launch night.
Scott Bailey, who heads up the project, said he's big on traditions — not superstitions. But a lot can go wrong on a night like this.
"You have to learn to live with disappointment," Bailey said. "Think of all the things that have to work — all the stuff on the rocket, the instrumentation, the batteries that power it, the radio that communicates the data down. Everything has to be perfect."
Bailey's project is the first in a series of NASA-affiliated launches planned for the next few weeks.
Each mission will explore a little-understood aspect of aurora physics. One, called Black and Diffuse Aurora Science Surveyor, or BaDASS, will focus on a phenomena called black aurora, which look like dark structures that drift along the regular aurora. They happen when auroral particles temporarily thin out or shut off in the upper atmosphere.
Another mission, called the Geophysical Non-Equilibrium Ionospheric System Science, or GNEISS, will gather information on how disturbances in the atmosphere distort auroral sheets, which look like folds in the aurora. Two rockets will launch moments apart and cross an arc together.
Bailey's team of Virginia Tech researchers used their rocket to study a type of gas the aurora creates when it excites nitrogen molecules. The project is called "PolarNOx," with the N and O capitalized to represent nitric oxide.
"Not nitrous oxide, which is laughing gas," Bailey insists.
The PolarNOx team's plan was to point the rocket at the star Algenib, then send it up to an altitude where the atmosphere is free of nitric oxide. On the rocket's descent, they'd use an ultraviolet instrument onboard to pick up tiny losses in starlight when it's obscured by nitric oxide. Those observations tell the scientists how much of the compound exists at different heights above Earth's surface.
Bailey said that data is critical to understanding the atmosphere as a whole.
"When nitric oxide is created, it lowers the amount of ozone in the stratosphere, and then there's less ozone to do the job of cooling the atmosphere," Bailey said. "So that will change the circulation from equator to pole — things like how air moves around the globe, the polar vortex, the jet stream — it's all connected."
Bailey said the mission's success isn't guaranteed,but that you can be dedicated to success and still have fun.
"If you're flying rockets in space, and you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong," Bailey said.
Just past 4 a.m., a crowd of guests and staff huddled together in the bitter winter wind to watch the launch. Many listened for a countdown that never came and were surprised by the sudden flash that lit up the snow-covered hills, and by the roar that followed.
If you missed the PolarNOx launch, or blinked before takeoff, more launches are planned at the Poker Flat facility between Feb. 7 and Feb. 20.
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