8:15 AM (Monday) | *NASA/Wallops rocket launch now scheduled for Monday evening, May 10th...may be visible in the eastern US…all weather permitting of course*
Paul Dorian
The Black Brant XII rocket is scheduled to launch at 8:04PM on Monday evening, May 10th from the NASA/Wallops facility in Virginia (with a 40 minute launch window). The Black Brant XII, carrying the KiNET-X payload, is a four-stage sounding rockets that can reach altitudes over 200 miles above Earth’ surface. Info and image courtesy NASA
Overview
After two postponements over the past two days, a rocket launch is now scheduled for Monday evening at the NASA/Wallops facility in Virginia and it could be visible in much of the eastern US. The mission is scheduled for no earlier than 8:04 PM on May 10th with a 40 minute launch window and it is designed to study space plasmas after the release of barium vapor.
The rocket launch on Monday evening could be visible in much of the eastern US as it climbs over 200 miles above the Earth’s surface. Image courtesy NASA
Details
The mission, called the KiNETic-scale energy and momentum transport eXperiment, or KiNet-X, is designed to study a very fundamental problem in space plasmas, namely, how are energy and momentum transported between different regions of space that are magnetically connected? The vapor will be released approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds to around 10 minutes after launch at about 217-249 miles altitude over the Atlantic Ocean and 540-560 miles downrange from Wallops and just north of Bermuda. 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. In general, the human eye does not see violet colors very well in darkness. The KiNET-X clouds will therefore be more difficult for the casual observer to see than some of the previous vapor missions launched from Wallops.
Live coverage of the mission will be available on the Wallops IBM video site (previously Ustream) beginning at 7:40 p.m. on launch day. Launch status updates can be found on the Wallops Facebook and Twitter sites. Backup days run through May 16, as NASA Wallops keeps a close eye on weather conditions.
The NASA Visitor Center at Wallops will not be open for launch viewing.
Meteorologist Paul Dorian
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