Radio Script
2003

Scientists say the aurora, or northern lights, offer the chance to study high-frequency plasma waves that occur in the ionosphere. (Photo courtesy Jeff Pederson, UAF Geophysical Institute.)

Rocket Science
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INTRO: To scientists studying the wintertime sky's magical and often colorful light show called the aurora, there's no better place than Alaska—even if it means waiting days. As Doug Schneider reports in this week's Arctic Science Journeys Radio, scientists say the show is worth the wait.

STORY: Dartmouth College physics professor James LaBelle spent more than a year preparing a host of instruments that he hoped would one day be loaded onto a rocket and launched into an Alaskan aurora. Once he arrived at the Poker Flat Research Range 30 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska, he had to wait another six days for just the right kind of aurora to appear—the sort of nighttime show that fills the sky with dazzling light.

LABELLE: "There's a lot of waiting, punctuated by exciting moments. Every night the aurora will act up and we'll think it's coming into position. We'll count the rocket down and then it will turn out to be a false alarm. That happened almost every night we were up there."

And then, on day six, all the stars aligned, so to speak, and LaBelle got what he worked so hard for.

James LaBelle's Terrier-Black Brant IX rocket lifts off from Poker Flat Research Range near Fairbanks on its way into an aurora to study high-altitude plasma waves. (Photo courtesy Chuck Johnson, UAF Geophysical Institute.)

LaBelle's rocket, a 50-foot-long, two-stage Terrier-Black Brant IX, blasted off the Poker Flat launch pad and flew 385 kilometers into the upper atmosphere, called the ionosphere, where the aurora is most active. It was the first rocket launched from the range during what is expected to be a busy auroral research season.

LaBelle likes to describe the aurora as nature's TV. Just as a television set fires electrons at a screen to create a picture, the aurora fires electrons at the earth's atmosphere. Think of the atmosphere as like a giant television set and the aurora as the picture, and you get the idea. But while the aurora is a fascinating phenomenon in itself, LaBelle is actually more interested in the effect of an aurora's fast-moving electrons on the plasma-rich atmosphere at altitudes from about 100 to 600 kilometers above the earth.

LABELLE: "Unseen to the eye, the electrons that are fired down at the atmosphere set up waves and turbulence in the atmosphere, somewhat analogous to a speedboat plowing through the water and setting up a wake of waves or turbulence around it. These waves are of interest to us. It turns out that at altitudes where the aurora occurs, the atmosphere is dominated by plasma. That is a gas of charged particles. The waves and turbulence in the plasma is much more complex. The aurora turns out to be an excellent natural laboratory to investigate these complicated plasma waves."

LaBelle's rocket flew through a virtual storm of auroral electrons. Along the way, his instruments collected a variety of measurements—everything from the density of the plasma's charged particles to the intensity of the surrounding magnetic fields. LaBelle hopes his measurements will be enough to see whether what happens to plasma in a real aurora matches what scientists predict will happen.

James LaBelle says learning more about plasma waves will help scientists understand more about the earth, but it may also lead to new discoveries about stars and other planets as well.

LABELLE: "It turns out that these charged particle gases are ubiquitous in the universe. We actually live in a small envelope, a rare piece of the universe that's not dominated by a gas of charged particles. So the measurements we make in the aurora of the physics of these charged particle gases; what we learn from that applies to a large part of the universe."

Up to 13 rockets are scheduled to be launched from the Poker Flat Research Range through early March. And like LaBelle's rocket, these also will be used to study aspects of plasma physics.

This is Arctic Science Journeys Radio, a production of the Alaska Sea Grant Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. I'm Doug Schneider.

Thanks to the following individual for help preparing this script:

Jim Labelle
Professor of Physics
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire 03755
Phone: 603-646-2973
Email: James.W.LaBelle@Dartmouth.edu or jlabelle@einstein.dartmouth.edu
Faculty Profile: http://www.dartmouth.edu/artsci/physics/faculty/labelle.html

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Related websites

University of Alaska Fairbanks Poker Flat Research Range

University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute

Aurora Alive Educational CD

Aurora Information

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