Indian-origin scientist to lead NASA's sounding rocket mission to success on Oct 14

NASA will be launching three sounding rockets on October 14 when the sun will be 10% dimmer than it normally is. October 14 will mark the annular solar eclipse and it could be a chance for scientists to learn more about the Earth's atmosphere. NASA will aim to uncover a treasure trove of knowledge about the atmosphere using the rockets that will help study how the sudden drop in sunlight affects our upper atmosphere.

Indian-origin scientist will lead the mission to success

The Sounding Rocket Mission named Atmospheric Perturbations around the Eclipse Path or APEP is being led by an Indian-origin scientist Aroh Barjatya. He is a professor of engineering physics and he directs the Space and Atmospheric Instrumentation Lab at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.

We can’t let the excitement about the Oct. 14 annular eclipse *overshadow* the science!

A @NASA mission will launch 3 sounding rockets from New Mexico during the Oct. 14 eclipse to study how the sudden drop in sunlight affects our upper atmosphere.https://t.co/KBigV1XtB4 pic.twitter.com/phRm38i4Rc

— NASA Wallops (@NASAWallops)

The solar eclipse will be a good time to study the atmosphere at an altitude of about 80 km. This layer of the atmosphere is called ionosphere where sunlight makes the electrons break away from atoms giving out ions and the separated particles recombine after sunset.

According to NASA, this will occur during the solar eclipse as well, except the sudden ionospheric temperature and density drop due to the solar phases will send waves of the said particles rippling through the ionosphere.

“If you think of the ionosphere as a pond with some gentle ripples on it, the eclipse is like a motorboat that suddenly rips through the water,” Barjatya explained in an official statement. “It creates a wake immediately underneath and behind it, and then the water level momentarily goes up as it rushes back in.”

Underscoring that all satellite communications go through ionosphere before reaching Earth, he further said, "As we become more dependent on space-based assets, we need to understand and model all perturbations in the ionosphere."

How will the mission work?

NASA plans to launch three rockets in succession from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico at an interval of 35 minutes. The rockets will fly outside the path of annularity (the area where Moon passes directly in front of the Sun) and deploy four instruments each. These instruments will measure changes in electric and magnetic fields, density and temperature. NASA says that this will be the first time simultaneous measurements of the ionosphere is taken from multiple locations during a solar eclipse. 

In addition to the instruments, a team of students from Embry-Riddle will deploy high-altitude balloons every 20 minutes that will reach 1,00,000 feet and collect atmospheric data during the eclipse. 

The next annular solar eclipse will not occur until 2046. Talking about the mission, Barjatya said, "This data set will reveal the widespread effects that eclipses have on the ionosphere at the smallest spatial scales.”