The SIERRA nightside auroral sounding rocket made observations of the origins of ion upflow, at topside F-region altitudes (below 700 km), comparatively large topside plasma densities (above 20 000/cc), and low energies (10 eV). Upflowing ions with bulk velocities up to 2 km/s are seen in conjunction with the poleward edge of a nightside substorm arc. The upflow is limited within the poleward e...

The Army Research Laboratory has been running an infrasonic array at its Blossom Point Research Facility since the summer of 1998. The infrasonic array monitors events in the 3 8 Hz window 24 hours a day/7 days a week. Interesting events are tracked down to determine the source of the infrasonic energy. This paper will discuss a series of detections that were determined to be sounding rocket la...

A method is presented for calculating the aerodynamic heating and shear stresses at the wall for tangent ogive' noses that are slender enough to maintain an attached nose shock through that. portion of flight duringwhich heat transfer from' the botundary layer to the wall is significant. The lower entropy of the attached nose shock combined with the inclusion of the streamwise pressure gradient...

An attitude reconstruction algorithm has been developed for a flexible sounding rocket whose spin vector nutates unstably about its minor inertia axis. This algorithm deduces attitude for use in post-flight analysis of the sounding rocket's science data. An additional motive for pursuing this work has been to show that a flexible-body dynamic model can be used in a Kalman filter/smoother-type a...

A wire boom deployment system has been developed that uses a mechanism which is similar to the classic yo-yo despin mechanism. The goal has been to develop a way to rapidly deploy wire booms from a spinning sounding-rocket experiment. The main challenge in using a yo-yo-type mechanism is to dissipate the excess kinetic energy so that the wire booms do not re-wrap themselves about the spacecraft...

The MaCH-SR1 project involved the design of a 1000lb thrust hybrid rocket with the effort being undertaken during two semesters by 8 senior aerospace engineering students at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The 2002-2003 team was the second year for the project, as the previous team built two static engines and performed test burns on both. The hybrid implemented a liquid O2/HTPB oxidizer...

Abstract Existing sounding rocket flight is probably disturbed by external factors, of which attitude lack automatic control function and trajectory not stable, thus the project designed a canard adjustable posture scheme based on PID algorithm, can effectively solve stability path anti-interference problem with high efficiency.

Abstract The work presents an application that enables the calculation of basic geometric dimensions parachutes used in sounding rocket recovery systems. Determining geometry parachute canopy, based on equation aerodynamic drag, which allows to obtain object drop velocity declared by user. developed also visualization canopy selected according specific requirements mission. key element is possi...