Nordic ionospheric sounding rocket seeding experiment (NISSE)

• Main Authors: Hølland, Vidar, Pitkänen, Timo, Baumann, Gisela, Mellemstrand, Gard, Søreide, Asbjørn, Njåstad, S., Slettebakken, K., Enell, Carl-Fredrik, Virtanen, Ilkka I., Vierinen, Juha, Tanskanen, Eija I.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: Bergen, Norway 2009
• Subjects: Fusion; Plasma and Space Physics; plasma och rymdfysik; Esrange; EISCAT; Fennoscandia
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-102625

The Nordic Ionospheric Sounding rocket Seeding Experiment (NISSE) is a student research project in the REXUS student rocket experiment program. The NISSE experiment flew onboard a sounding rocket, the REXUS 6, which was launched at the Esrange rocket range on March 12, 2009. In the NISSE experiment about 8.3 kg of water was to be released into the ionosphere at the REXUS 6 apogee altitude of about 95 km. The EISCAT UHF incoherent scatter radar system located in Northern Fennoscandia, was in action for detection and observation of the effects of the released water on the upper atmosphere. Although NISSE was only partially successful, we are motivated to present here the conceptual description of the experiment and discuss the experience gained from an educational point of view.