U.Colorado-Boulder Awarded $883,000 For 2007 Sounding Rocket Mission(Forwarded)

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University of Colorado-Boulder
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Contact:
Scott Robertson, (303) 492-6453
Emily CoBabe Ammann, (303) 735-5814
Jim Scott, (303) 492-3114

March 22, 2006

CU-Boulder Awarded $883,000 For 2007 Sounding Rocket Mission

The University of Colorado at Boulder has been awarded $833,000 by NASA
for a 2007 sounding rocket mission to study high-altitude clouds believed
to be tied to climate change.

The sounding rocket will be launched from Norway to study noctilucent
clouds, which form at Earth's poles at altitudes of about 50 miles in the
portion of the atmosphere known as the mesosphere. First identified in
1885 in northern high latitudes, the clouds have been increasing in
brightness and frequency.

The clouds are believed to be related to long-term increases in carbon
dioxide and methane, and have been called the "miner's canary of global
climate change," according to physics Professor Scott Robinson, also a
LASP researcher. CU-Boulder is teaming up with the University of
Washington on the project.

The CU-Boulder team is building the mesospheric aerosol sampling
spectrometer, or MASS, for the mission to measure the size and
distribution of the cloud particles and their variation in the atmosphere,
Robertson said. The launch is part of an international campaign to study
the clouds and will consist of more than a dozen rocket launches and
ground-based optical and radar support measurements.

Data from the campaign will be coordinated with the NASA mission called
Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere, or AIM, due to launch in late 2006. AIM
will be taking images and other measures from a low-Earth orbit. LASP is
building two of the three instruments for the AIM mission and will control
the satellite from the Space Technology Building control center in the CU
Research Park on the east campus.