A NASA rocket team will soon begin its mission to check giant, hurricane-like swirls within the upper atmosphere to grasp weather patterns that impact the entire planet.
Called the Vorticity Experiment (VortEx), the mission will launch from the Andøya Space Center within the town of Andenes in northern Norway. The launch window will probably be between March 17 and 26, in keeping with the Andøya Space Center.
The first objective of the mission is to learn the way high-altitude winds produce a phenomenon often known as buoyancy waves, NASA said.
What are buoyancy waves?
Buoyancy waves are large pulses of energy that drive changes where the Earth’s atmosphere blends into space.
Based on NASA, buoyancy waves occur when a gust or disturbance suddenly pushes denser air upwards right into a lower-pressure region, creating an oscillation because the atmosphere tries to balance itself out.
These oscillations result in waves that spread or ripple away from the source of the disturbance, they added.
“They might come from approaching storm fronts, or winds hitting the mountains and being sent upwards,” said Gerald Lehmacher, a professor of physics at Clemson University in South Carolina and principal investigator for the VortEx mission.
As buoyancy waves ripple out, they may additionally move upwards and go through stable layers of the atmosphere. In doing so, they’ll produce giant swirls of air.
These swirls, or vortices, are believed to stretch tens of miles across. Due to their immense size, vortices are too large to measure and study with conventional approaches, NASA said.
To beat this, Lehmacher designed VortEx to measure the vortices.
How will the rockets study the vortices?
Based on NASA, the VortEx mission will use 4 rockets that will probably be launched two at a time. Each pair consists of 1 high-flyer and one low-flyer, launched just a few minutes apart.
The high-flyers will measure the winds and can peak at about 224 miles (360 kilometers), NASA said. The low-flyers, reaching roughly 87 miles (140 kilometers) altitude, will measure air density, which affects how vortices form.
The rockets will make their measurements for just a few minutes before returning to the surface and splashing down into the Norwegian Sea.
A livestream of the VortEx launch will probably be broadcast on the Andøya Space Center YouTube channel starting March 17 at 4:30 p.m. E.T.
A NASA rocket team will soon begin its mission to check giant, hurricane-like swirls within the upper atmosphere to grasp weather patterns that impact the entire planet.
Called the Vorticity Experiment (VortEx), the mission will launch from the Andøya Space Center within the town of Andenes in northern Norway. The launch window will probably be between March 17 and 26, in keeping with the Andøya Space Center.
The first objective of the mission is to learn the way high-altitude winds produce a phenomenon often known as buoyancy waves, NASA said.
What are buoyancy waves?
Buoyancy waves are large pulses of energy that drive changes where the Earth’s atmosphere blends into space.
Based on NASA, buoyancy waves occur when a gust or disturbance suddenly pushes denser air upwards right into a lower-pressure region, creating an oscillation because the atmosphere tries to balance itself out.
These oscillations result in waves that spread or ripple away from the source of the disturbance, they added.
“They might come from approaching storm fronts, or winds hitting the mountains and being sent upwards,” said Gerald Lehmacher, a professor of physics at Clemson University in South Carolina and principal investigator for the VortEx mission.
As buoyancy waves ripple out, they may additionally move upwards and go through stable layers of the atmosphere. In doing so, they’ll produce giant swirls of air.
These swirls, or vortices, are believed to stretch tens of miles across. Due to their immense size, vortices are too large to measure and study with conventional approaches, NASA said.
To beat this, Lehmacher designed VortEx to measure the vortices.
How will the rockets study the vortices?
Based on NASA, the VortEx mission will use 4 rockets that will probably be launched two at a time. Each pair consists of 1 high-flyer and one low-flyer, launched just a few minutes apart.
The high-flyers will measure the winds and can peak at about 224 miles (360 kilometers), NASA said. The low-flyers, reaching roughly 87 miles (140 kilometers) altitude, will measure air density, which affects how vortices form.
The rockets will make their measurements for just a few minutes before returning to the surface and splashing down into the Norwegian Sea.
A livestream of the VortEx launch will probably be broadcast on the Andøya Space Center YouTube channel starting March 17 at 4:30 p.m. E.T.
