FLORIDA CAMPUS
EMBRY-RIDDLE ROCKETS OFFER CLOSER LOOK AT ECLIPSE EFFECTS An Embry-Riddle team designed a multi-institution NASA rocket mission to learn more about changes that solar eclipses can cause in the Earth’s upper atmosphere and how they impact communication in the air and on the ground.
Led by Dr. Aroh Barjatya, professor of Engineering Physics and director of
The Embry-Riddle team aimed to capture essential data across multiple points in space and over time while the eclipse was happening — a scientific first. For additional insights, ground-based measurements were captured by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base. Farther from the center, collaborators at the MIT Haystack Observatory used radar to evaluate perturbations in the ionosphere hundreds of miles from the eclipse path. Embry-Riddle researchers also launched specifically developed high-altitude balloons every 20 minutes for several hours to study how meteorological conditions changed during an eclipse. All these measurements will aid ionosphere modeling efforts led by Embry-Riddle and the University of Colorado Boulder. Barjatya and his team recovered and relaunched the three main payloads atop new rockets from the Wallops Flight Facility during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Megan Soll (’25), an undergraduate student in Engineering Physics, was part of the balloon study. “Building the balloon sondes was a great hands-on experience with software and hardware integration,” Soll said. “It has given me a deeper appreciation for the nuances and connection between the two sides of payload development that I have not been able to get simply via my coursework.”
the Space and Atmospheric Instrumentation Lab (SAIL) at the Daytona Beach Campus, the team fired three sounding rockets from New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range during the annular solar eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023. The Embry-Riddle team included professor of Engineering Physics Dr. Matthew Zettergren; research scientists Dr. Robert Clayton and Dr. Shantanab Debchoudhury; Ph.D. students Rachel Conway, Henry Valentine and Nathan Graves; master’s degree students Peter Ribbens, Joshua Milford and Jonas Rowan; and undergraduate students Megan Soll, Johnathan Bizzano and Maddox Morrison. Although a solar eclipse may seem serene, it propels a shadow at speeds up to 1,100 mph. All that energy rocks the atmosphere, potentially affecting communications. “Think of the ionosphere as the surface of a pond,” Barjatya said. “There are already ripples happening. Now, imagine a motorboat suddenly ripping through that water. The boat creates waves all around it. The water level dips, below and right behind it, and then rises above the background level for a brief time as it rushes back in. That’s what an eclipse does to the ionosphere, except in three dimensions.” Researchers at Embry-Riddle and Dartmouth College built instruments for the sounding rocket mission, which Barjatya called APEP, for “Atmospheric Perturbations around the Eclipse Path.” The name was inspired by a mythological snake called Apep that chased the sun god Ra, in ancient Egyptian lore — an event deemed responsible for eclipses.
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