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Recent and Ongoing Improvements at Poker Flat Research Range
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Since Poker Flat Research Range was created in 1968, it has undergone
various upgrades and improvements to keep pace with technology and to
support increasingly complicated research missions. A major
upgrade of the range was initiated in 1988 after the U.S. Arctic
Research Commission emphasized the importance of the site as a
national resource for polar upper atmospheric studies. Since then,
many projects have been initiated
to make the range a national center for space and environmental
research in the Arctic, and to enable it to serve as a focal point
for future research by NASA, the National Science Foundation, the
Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and other agencies.
Japan's Communications Research Laboratories
has become an important research partner, and other Japanese
agencies and universities are involved with projects at Poker Flat.
Current Facilities Projects
As the decade draws to a close, several projects are underway to improve
basic infrastructure at Poker Flat, and to add scientific research capabilities.
These include:
- A new Range Administration Center (RAC) to replace the old Office and
Poker Inn buildings.
- Back-up power facilities to reduce problems caused by power outages.
- An enhanced lidar
facility which will house a Rayleigh lidar, a light-based remote
sensing system analogous to radar. The lidar includes a large collector
and high-power lasers optimized for both Rayleigh and resonance scatter.
This system measures density, temperature and winds between
25 and 100 kilometers in altitude.
Other ongoing improvements at Poker Flat include
communications
networks suitable for data transmission, computer activity, video and
voice communications; roads, water and electric power distribution; fire
protection, and sanitary facilities. For more information on recent
construction, please see the Division of Design and Construction's
Poker
Flat Project Page.
Previous Upgrades
The first major effort in the recent improvement program
was to upgrade an outdated electrical system at the range
and to provide support for the 1992 Spirit II campaign, a complex mission
including the first guided rocket launched from the range.
Since then, other projects have included improving launch sites and scientific
instrumentation to enable the range to accommodate larger,
higher-flying sounding rockets and to perform a broader mission of
basic research. Some of the facilities resulting from these efforts are:
- A new road to the upper range, improving safety and accessibility.
- Cooperative research projects with CRL and
NOAA, including the world's largest imaging
riometer, which uses a 16x16 antenna array (256 crossed dipole
antennas), a large MF radar near
the front gate, and various instruments in and around the Science
Operations Center.
- The T. Neil Davis Science
Operations Center (SOC). This facility provides special
optical domes which allow a variety of instruments to have a nearly
unobstructed view of the entire sky, with full telecommunications
capabilities. In addition to existing instruments, new instruments
were acquired for installation in the SOC. They include
interferometers, greatly improved imagers, and an enhanced meridian
scanning photometer (MSP).
The SOC also contains the Geospace
Environment Data Display System (GEDDS) that provides
scientists with information about the arctic polar regions. GEDDS
helps scientists determine when atmospheric conditions are right for a
rocket launch, and provides information useful for a variety of
research projects at the range.
- Rocket Assembly Building.
This building provides more room to put together the variety of motors and
parts that compose a sounding rocket. It replaces a smaller RAB built
in the early 1970s.
- Telemetry Building Annex.
This addition to the existing Telemetry site includes
the Transportable Orbital Tracking System (TOTS), which is
composed of instruments and equipment that can receive data from
satellites and rocket payloads in flight. Large telemetry dishes near
the building assist in the downlinking of data.
- Launcher Enclosures.
Most rocket motors and scientific payloads need to be kept
at constant temperatures before they are launched. The launcher enclosures
surround launchers on range so that the rocket on those launchers can be
kept warm while final preparations for launch are made. Mounted on
rails, the enclosures can be pulled away from the launchers at the
desired time.
- Climate Change Monitoring
Station. This air sampling station with modern data handling
capabilities creates a center for expanded efforts to measure
stratospheric and tropospheric ozone, greenhouse gases, and arctic
aerosols.
In addition to the work done at Poker Flat, part of the effort
has been directed at improving the support facilities which are necessary for
efficient research activities.
A network of downrange
observatories linked to PFRR via real-time
telecommunications from the farthest parts of Alaska is being
improved and expanded. The downrange
observatories will continuously record magnetometer and riometer data,
and some observatories will provide platforms for optical instruments
and other instruments used during research projects.
The High-Latitude Monitoring Station
(HLMS) near Anchorage, formerly operated
by NOAA, has been acquired and integrated into the PFRR observatory
network. HLMS supplies magnetometer, riometer, total electron content
(TEC), and auroral radar data to PFRR.
The Data Analysis Center at the
Geophysical Institute processes, stores, and analyzes the data from PFRR, the
downrange observatories, and NOAA/SEC. The Data Analysis Center is the home
of this WWW server, and supports anonymous ftp access as well.
Modified 28 September 1999 by
ddr
