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The PolarNOx payload was an experiment designed to measure nitric oxide densities in the polar night, launched from Poker Flat Research Range (PFRR) in Alaska on Jan 27th, 2017.
Launch photo image credit: Jamie Adkins
Dr. Scott Bailey, myself and Dr. Justin Carstens with the assembled rocket in the background.
Apart from being part of the team that calibrated, assembled and tested the payload, my responsibilities included operating the instrument during flight and writing GSE software that received and interpreted data sent down by the instrument in real-time.
In flight images of the starlight (the pale horizontal and vertical bands seen in the two images) falling on the detector. The two images show the wavelength (left) and positional (right) operating modes of the instrument. These plots were the visualization component of the Python based tool I developed for the mission. The GUI for the project leveraged the Python tkinter libraries.
Scientific motivation
Scientific motivation
As explained in the numerical modeling section, NO is an important minor species in the in Earth's thermosphere. Photodissociation is a key process that destroys nitric oxide, which when absent for a prolonged period (during the polar night, for example) allows NO to be carried downward into the mesosphere and stratosphere, where it can catalytically destroy ozone. This coupling between the thermosphere and the mesosphere/stratosphere is a critical yet poorly understood component of upper atmospheric processes.
The Payload
The Payload
The experiment was proposed to make the first ever measurement of NO densities in the polar night. We do this by means of stellar occultation, where a star is used as UV light source and is observed through the Earth's atmosphere, and absorption at specific wavelengths is interpreted to obtain an altitude profile of NO.
The payload comprises of a Cassegrain telescope (seen below in the pictures) which sends light into an aperture, where a mirror and grating assembly is used to produce a spectrum which is collected by a CCD detector.
To aid the rocket attitude control system and fine tune the pointing of the rocket during flight, a Xybion camera is used to image the entrance aperture plane of the spectrograph section. This video feed is used to guide the star into the aperture during flight.
Clockwise from top: Dr. Bill McClintock (CU, LASP) and myself during payload integration at WFF, Wallops island; Checking telescope alignments before vibrational tests of the payload; Evacuating the payload at PFRR in preparation for launch.
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