NASA Sounding Rockets to Launch from Alaska to Study Cosmic Dust and Dying Stars
Two NASA-funded sounding rockets are scheduled to launch from the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska as early as today, October 19, kicking off a series of missions designed to study cosmic dust and the deaths of stars.
Launch Windows and Mission Parameters at Poker Flat
The daily launch window runs from 9:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. through October 23. Neither mission requires clear skies or auroral activity, which allows for potential lift-offs beginning immediately. Each mission utilizes a two-stage Black Brant IX sounding rocket capable of reaching an altitude of approximately 180 miles. These rockets travel into space but do not enter Earth orbit. The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute owns the range, located at Mile 30 Steese Highway, with support from NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program Office and its Heliophysics Division. Residents and observers can track updates by texting PFRRLAUNCHES to 866-485-7614 or by checking the Poker Flat Facebook page for live video feeds.
DUST III Investigates Cosmic Origins
The Determining Unknown yet Significant Traits mission, known as DUST, launches for a third time to examine how atoms and molecules from dying stars form tiny grains of cosmic dust. Joe Nuth, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead scientist for the program, emphasized the fundamental role of these particles. “Without cosmic dust, you don’t have any terrestrial planets,” Nuth said. “Without dust, there’s no life on Earth because there wouldn’t be an Earth.” Material released by stars travels through the interstellar medium before gathering into vast clouds where chemical reactions occur on the surfaces of dust grains. The size and makeup of these grains dictate how they clump together to form comets, asteroids, and planets. The DUST III payload carries a tiny laboratory containing silicate dust grains into space to observe their formation and growth under near-weightless conditions for a few minutes. Previous iterations of the DUST program launched in October 2019 and September 2020 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, marking the project as a ongoing collaboration between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
INFUSE II Targets the Dumbbell Nebula
The Integral Field Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Experiment, or INFUSE, focuses on how stars release matter and energy during their life cycles and after death. Brian Fleming, an astrophysics and planetary sciences research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, leads the mission, which follows an initial launch from October 2023 that studied stellar remains in the constellation Cygnus. “When they do that, they feed back that enriched material and that energy into the galaxy, which causes the next cycle of stellar evolution,” Fleming said. INFUSE II turns its instruments toward the Dumbbell Nebula, a gas cloud shed by a dead star that once resembled our sun, leaving behind a white dwarf core. The rocket carries an upgraded integral field spectrograph designed by Fleming’s team at the University of Colorado Boulder. This instrument measures far-ultraviolet light across multiple locations in the nebula simultaneously to determine gas movement, composition, and temperature. Fleming noted that the instrument acts as a pathfinder for NASA’s planned Habitable Worlds Observatory, aiming to demonstrate new detector technology, mirror coatings, and optical designs.
Missions Shift Focus to Sub-Arctic Alaska
Both missions represent follow-up efforts to prior launches conducted at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, shifting operational focus to the sub-Arctic environment of interior Alaska. The INFUSE II payload left the payload building on Monday, Oct. 12, preparing the hardware for the current launch window. While launch teams monitor conditions for the Black Brant IX rockets through October 23, mission planners have not yet confirmed the precise minute of lift-off for either the DUST III or INFUSE II payloads.
