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FAIRBANKS - Researchers at the Poker Flat Research Range sent four rockets into an aurora filled sky early this morning.

The four launches were successful and appear to have produced data that will help researchers understand turbulent air currents in the upper atmosphere, said Sue Mitchell a spokeswoman for the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.

The M-TEX mission will be launched in conjunction with the MIST mission.These two collaborative investigations will be flown from Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska in early 2015. A total of four rockets will be flown to investigate and enhance our understanding of how meteorological processes control the impact of solar processes on the Earth’s atmosphere, i.e. how does the atmosphere respond to auroral, radiation belt, and solar energetic particles, and what are the effects on nitric oxides (NOx) and ozone.

The MIST payloads, launched in close sequence with the M-TEX rockets, gather data about turbulence in the mesospheric inversion layer by deploying tri-methyl aluminum tracer (TMA) material. The TMA is released from the payloads during both the upleg and downleg portions of the flight and creates whitish clouds that are photographed from several ground stations. Analysis of the data will enable detection of turbulence in the region between 80 and 140 km.