HotPay2 Soars into the Skies Above Andøya

31. January 2008 UPDATED: 06. February 2008

The HotPay2 principal investigator, Prof. John Plane from University of Leeds is smiling. The HotPay2 sounding rocket has just completed its long anticipated spaceflight. "On behalf of the HotPay2 science team I must thank ARR for their friendly support and professionalism."

The payload carried nine instrument types involving scientific groups from University of Leeds (UK), Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory (Finland), MISU (Sweden), Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Bulgaria), Slovak Academy of Sciences (Slovakia), Graz University of Technology (Austria), Dartmouth College (USA), CETP (France) and LPCE (France).

For the scientific instruments onboard, 7 out of 9 performed nominally and gave good data for further scientific studies.

"We launched at January 31, 20:14:00, local time, after a couple of days with bad weather." Manager of ARR Payload Services, Mr. Kenneth Hauglund explains. "The payload systems performed outstanding and the rocket reached an altitude of about 380 kilometers.”

Earth was inside a solar wind stream at the time of lift-off, and the vehicle flew into an auroral arc. The ALOMAR observatory was online with a lidar beam, pointing into the flight trajectory of HotPay2. "It was really cool, seeing the lidar beam kind of pointing the direction for the launch vehicle," Mr Hauglund says. "But seriously, it´s the combined effort from ground based instruments and rocketborne instruments which will help scientists decipher the whole picture in these types of experiments."

HotPay2 was financed by the European Union 6^th Framework Program, and the mission finalized the so-called eARI project involving EU scientific participation on the ALOMAR observatory and 2 sounding rockets.

The HotPay2 mission is a major milestone for the ARR Payload Services – giving momentum to a more comprehensive program in the near future.

The next mission served by ARR Payload Services is the ICI-2 sounding rocket, set for launch from Svalbard in December this year, led by Principal Investigator Prof. Jøran Moen from University of Oslo.

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Contact

Mr Kenneth Hauglund, Manager, Payload Services, ARR.
Mr Kolbjørn Dahle, Manager, Marketing- and Communications dept., ARR.