A professor from the University of Oslo in Norway successfully launched a two-stage rocket from Ny-Alesund, Svalbard, on Saturday to intercept and research aurora activity over the northern hemisphere.
Known as the ICI-3 mission, the flight is designed to investigate waves and instability phenomena driven by the newly discovered class of flow events named Reversed Flow Events.
The rocket was launched at 2:21 a.m. EST and intercepted an aurora, reaching an altitude of about 219 miles.
“The flight was nominal and reached all its scientific goals,” according to mission updates posted the Andoya Rocket Range website. “The onboard booms deployed, and ground based observatories such as Eiscat Svalbard and the KHO Observatory at Longyearbyen made ground based measurements in the same region of sky as the ICI-3 flew through. Telemetry antennas tracked the launch vehicle from both Ny-Ålesund and Andøya, and received good quality data.
“The plan for the launch team now is to clean up and arrange a post flight meeting (a mission de-brief).”
The ICI-3 payload was built by Norway’s Andoya Rocket Range and the onboard experiments have been provided by participating research groups.
The two-stage rocket used a VS30 as the first stage and an Improved Orion as the second stage to launch the experiments high above Svalbard. Svalbard is located north of Europe, midway between Norway and the North Pole.
Professor Joran Moen is the principal investigator for the mission.
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