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The rocket carrying the first flight of FOXSI, an instrument gathering X-ray data on the sun, before its launch in 2012.
(NASA / FOXSI / UC Berkley)
NASA will launch two short rocket missions tomorrow (7 September): we will test a parachute that could be used to help land the next rover on Mars; the other will measure tiny explosions in the sun called "nanoforms".
Rocket launches will take place separately in Virginia and New Mexico. Only the parachute test will be broadcast live from 9:00 am EDT (1:00 pm GMT) on the Ustream page of the NASA flight installation. The sounding rockets fly for about half an hour and never reach altitudes high enough to stably orbit the Earth.
The launch will be the third test of the Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiment (ASPIRE), designed for NASA's next Red Planet rover mission, called March 2020. The sound rocket, a 58-foot Brant IX Black Terrier height, will carry the parachute up to a height of 50 kilometers. Then, the camera will unfold as it lands on Earth at a faster speed than the sound. [NASA Sounding Rocket Lights Up the Sky: Photos]
The ASPIRE launch window opens at 9:30 am EDT (1:30 pm GMT) and will extend until 12:30 pm. EDT (1730 GMT). If the rocket can not take off in this window, there are additional possibilities until September 15th.
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The parachute should travel about 40 miles from the launch site of Wallops Island in Virginia and land in the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists will fish it out of the ocean to study the parachute with photos captured by a hidden camera aboard the rocket.
The second launch of tomorrow's rocket probe will take off from the White Sands missile lineup in New Mexico and will also constitute the third flight of its technology, called the X-ray Focusing Optics (FOXSI) X-ray Imager.
FOXSI will reach a height of 300 kilometers, where it will gather X-ray data on the sun. This type of light can help scientists understand what is happening to make the outside atmosphere of the sun incredibly hot – millions of degrees in degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius. This will also allow scientists to study nanoforms – tiny but extremely powerful energy surges in the sun, which they suspect to be responsible for all this heat.
This flight, the third in FOXSI, will gather data on a wider X-ray range than its previous flights in 2012 and 2014, which means scientists can more accurately assess sun temperatures.
The launch window will open at 11:15 local time (1:15 pm EDT; 5:15 pm GMT), but the FOXSI flight is not broadcast live.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to clarify the sound of rockets.
Original article on Space.com.
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