Rocket launched from White Sands studies Sun, impact on Earth

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- The thunder of a solid rocket booster hurtling a scientific payload to the edge of space shook the sides of buildings on White Sands Missile Range Friday.

The sounding rocket carried the first space test of a new type of technology meant to study what happens on the surface of the Sun - and how it impacts life and technology on Earth.

It's fantastic. I mean, it's been a lot of work. A lot of fun, a lot of pulling my hair out, you know, all sorts of those roller coaster of emotions that we've been through. 

Professor Phillip Chamberlain is the principal investigator for the launch, meaning he's in charge of the scientific payload and reason behind the mission

We're affected by the sun. So all this activity, all these changes in the sun are all related, a term we like to call solar eruptive events is that when big explosions happen on the sun, .... and it's a term called space weather. It not just affects the atmosphere and the temperature of our upper atmosphere and the density it then propagates to the technology that we're dependent on, such as the global positioning system or GPS. 

The team spent the last five years building this new type of instrument.  

Vicki Herde started as a graduate student on the project.

She now has her degree, but returned to see the project and the science it will collect that will help better understand how solar flares happen - and predict them.

We will be able to use this information to update our models and understanding of the sun so that we can get that little baby step closer to being able to make these predictions. 

Family and friends of the students and scientists of the launch were able to view it - from a safe distance.

Like Mitchell Horst, who previously got to tour the lab making the new technology.

It's just kind of cool to see, like the transition from like just a little the objects that's been worked on for 2 or 3 years to go now into space and actually do its job. 

It will take months to years to fully analyze the data from Friday's launch - and then plan future missions.

And for the military, the continuing mission is to push the scientific boundaries.

I'm proud that the White Sands Missile Range is America's range. We are the first to test. And as a really exciting partnership that we demonstrated today between NASA, the Navy and the U.S. Army here in White Space, White Sands Missile Range.