NASA Wallops didn't have much wallop

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After much delay, it blew up as expected.

Last night was the launch of the NASA Wallops sounding rocket.

A mission to explore energy transport in space using a NASA suborbital sounding rocket launching May 8, 2021, from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia may provide a brief light show for residents of the eastern United States and Bermuda.

A four-stage Black Brant XII rocket will be used for the mission that includes the release of barium vapor that will form two green-violet clouds that may be visible for about 30 seconds. The barium vapor is not harmful to the environment or public health

~ source: NASA Wallops

For this experiment to work, visibility from Bermuda and from Virginia must be clear. When the flight was first ready for launch, visibility in the US was not optimal, so it was postponed several times. They've been trying to launch this since May 8th. Then, when visibility in the Eastern US cleared up this weekend, visibility in Bermuda became not optimal. But, last night, I think they figured it was now or never, so they launched it.

I haven't seen any images of the glow it was supposed to make. Suspicious0bservers morning space weather has video of the launch and a green cloud image of the supposed detonation.

On NASA Wallops Twitter feed, there is this photo and many other photos and videos from different places on the East coast of the US.

I'm not sure if they consider this the success they expected. But, it did do as expected.

wallops_indigo.jpg

Immediately after release of the vapor, the spherical clouds are a mixture of green and violet, but that phase only lasts about 30 seconds when the un-ionized component of the cloud has diffused away. After exposure to sunlight the vapor clouds quickly ionize and take on a violet color.

The ionized portion of the cloud becomes tied to the magnetic field lines and diffuses parallel to the field lines but not perpendicular to it. In the mid-Atlantic region latitudes, the field lines are inclined by about 45 degrees to the horizontal, so the violet clouds stretch out in a slanted orientation and look more like short trails than a cloud. Because the motion of the neutral portion of the clouds is not constrained by the magnetic field lines, they spread out more quickly and become too thin to see with the naked eye much sooner than the ionized component.

I wish I was scientific enough to know what this all means in terms of "energy transport" or why they need to study energy transport in space.


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Let the positive energy sing!

More Power to the Minnows!!


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2 comments
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You need to test somehow all that tech received from the Extraterrestrials, isn't it?

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Yeah...when you steal or reverse engineer something, you need to test it before you use it.

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