Observations of the Mesosphere/Lower Thermosphere with the Next Generation of Reusable Suborbital Vehicles

Details Observations of the Mesosphere/Lower Thermosphere with the Next Generation of Reusable Suborbital Vehicles Observations of the Mesosphere/Lower Thermosphere with the Next Generation of Reusable Suborbital Vehicles

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufmsa24a..09s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #SA24A-09

Physics

[0300] Atmospheric Composition And Structure, [0340] Atmospheric Composition And Structure / Middle Atmosphere: Composition And Chemistry, [0341] Atmospheric Composition And Structure / Middle Atmosphere: Constituent Transport And Chemistry, [0342] Atmospheric Composition And Structure / Middle Atmosphere: Energy Deposition

Scientific paper

The mesosphere-lower thermosphere (MLT), extending from about 50 to 140 km altitude, is the least sampled and arguably the least understood region of the Earth's atmosphere. The development of commercial reusable suborbital vehicles may provide low cost and frequent access to this region of the atmosphere for atmospheric observations that could in turn provide a basis for understanding its complex dynamical structure, i.e. MLT weather. Frequent and long-term observations could determine how that weather is changing in concert with the changing climate on Earth. In addition to providing MLT observational opportunities, the next generation of reusable suborbital vehicles would provide a new testing ground for space instrumentation. Advantages of human-tended instrumentation would be the flexibility in dealing with unexpected observational opportunities, and the obvious advantage of testing experimentation without the typical necessary automation and telemetry. An exciting by-product of this new observational platform would be the opportunities for training the next generation of experimental space scientists. Through low cost and frequent access, this would open up space exploration to vast numbers of students and educators.

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