IOWA - A NASA rocket launched Wednesday night has instruments from University of Iowa scientists.
The U-I Space Physics program is conducting an experiment to find out how manmade radio waves behave in the atmospheric layer known as the ionosphere.
The research could help with the operation of weather satellites, air traffic, the power grid and GPS.
The Iowa researchers are assisting on a NASA project called VIPER.
VIPER stands for Vlf trans-Ionospheric Propagation Experiment Rocket. The rocket is able to quickly, and relatively inexpensively get to an area in the atmosphere that's too high for airplanes and too low for satellites.
The Wednesday night launch collected measurements and data at a distance about 90 miles from earth.
The NASA Terrier-Improved Malemute suborbital sounding rocket was launched at 9:15 p.m. EDT, May 26th, 2021 from the Wallops Flight Facility, on Wallops Island, Virgina.
The next launch currently scheduled from Wallops is a Northrop Grumman Minotaur I rocket for the United States Space Force (USSF) carrying a national security payload for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The USSF Space and Missile Systems Center’s Launch Enterprise is providing the launch services for this mission, named NROL-111.
The rocket will launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’s Pad 0B at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island.
The next NASA sounding rocket launch from Wallops will be a Terrier-Improved Orion the morning of June 24 carrying the RockOn educational payload.