Active Missions

The aurora creates NO which builds to large abundances in the polar night. The NO can under appropriate conditions be transported to the stratosphere where it will catalytically destroy ozone. The PolarNOx experiment is designed to measure the intensity of nitric oxide in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere in the polar region by observing starlight with a high spectral resolution UV spectrograph operating near 215 nm. Attenuation of the starlight by NO is used to obtain an NO altitude profile. The target star is Algenib (Gamma Pegasi). More ...

Loss through Auroral Microburst Pulsations (LAMP) is intended to accomplish the following: Measure pulsating aurora, the highest energy aurora, to see if it plays a role in emptying the radiation belts. Determine the spatial distribution of microbursts with respect to pulsating patches. Determine if microburst "trains" are related to optical signatures of pulsating aurbra; if so, determine if microbursts cause modulations of auroral luminosity. More ...