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60-549: Black Brant was the result of research at Canadian Armament Research and Development Establishment (CARDE) during the 1950s into the nature of the upper part of the atmosphere as part of ongoing research into anti-ballistic missile systems and very-long-range communication. In 1957 CARDE contracted Bristol to produce a simple rocket fuselage , called the Propulsion Test Vehicle , for studies into high-power solid fuels . The resulting design, by Albert Fia ,

120-563: A Black Brant XII suborbital sounding rocket launched from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility to create an artificial noctilucent cloud. The cloud was to be observed over a period of weeks or months by ground instruments and the Spatial Heterodyne IMager for MEsospheric Radicals (SHIMMER) instrument on the NRL/STP STPSat-1 spacecraft. The rocket's exhaust plume was observed and reported to news organizations in

180-622: A Black Brant XII four-stage sounding rocket from the Andøya Rocket Range off the northwestern coast of Norway caused the Norwegian rocket incident , also known as the Black Brant scare. The trajectory resembled that of a U.S. Navy submarine-launched Trident missile . Russian nuclear forces were put on high alert as a result, fearing a high-altitude nuclear attack that could blind Russian radar, and Russia's "nuclear briefcase",

240-466: A diffuse scattering layer of water ice crystals near the summer polar mesopause . They consist of ice crystals and from the ground are only visible during astronomical twilight . Noctilucent roughly means "night shining" in Latin . They are most often observed during the summer months from latitudes between ±50° and ±70°. Too faint to be seen in daylight , they are visible only when the observer and

300-522: A giant balloon from Esrange , Sweden which traveled through the stratosphere across the Arctic to Western Nunavut , Canada in five days. The giant balloon was loaded with cameras, which captured six million high-resolution images filling up 120 terabytes of data storage, aiming to study the PMCs which are affected by the atmospheric gravity waves , resulted from air being pushed up by mountain ranges all

360-553: A lengthy study of the upper atmosphere was undertaken from instrumented balloons. Another development from this era was the use of gun-fired models for high-speed testing, instead of using a wind tunnel . Led by Gerald Bull , the sabot –based system would go on to be used in Project HARP during the early 1960s. The early portions of the 1960s was taken up developing a series of increasingly powerful high-acceleration solid rocket propellants, and to test them they designed and built

420-494: A re-alignment from pure research to smaller projects directly requested by the Armed Forces took place, along with a change of name to Defence Research Establishment Valcartier ( DREV ) and a general downsizing of the station and its budgets. Since then DREV has undertaken numerous projects in the field of battlefield command and control, detection and monitoring, and various battlefield decoy systems. On April 1, 2000, DREV

480-537: A test vehicle that would later become the Black Brant sounding rocket . Due to this research CARDE was later involved in the design of a US-Canada-Mexico meteorological sounding rocket, the Metroc . The ABM research eventually wound down with no working system in place, however the solid fuels developed during the program were widely used for rocketry in various western military systems. CARDE then looked into using

540-455: Is not well understood but a possible explanation is that the ice grains become coated with a thin metal film composed of sodium and iron , which makes the cloud far more reflective to radar, although this explanation remains controversial. Sodium and iron atoms are stripped from incoming micrometeors and settle into a layer just above the altitude of noctilucent clouds, and measurements have shown that these elements are severely depleted when

600-422: Is there any evidence of a dependence on auroral activity. This indicates that control of polar mesospheric clouds is determined by geographical rather than geomagnetic factors. The brightness of polar mesospheric clouds and noctilucent clouds appears to be consistent at the latitudes where both are observed, but polar mesospheric clouds near the pole are much brighter than noctilucent clouds, even taking into account

660-557: The Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere satellite suggests that noctilucent clouds require water vapour, dust, and very cold temperatures to form. The sources of both the dust and the water vapour in the upper atmosphere are not known with certainty. The dust is believed to come from micrometeors , although particulates from volcanoes and dust from the troposphere are also possibilities. The moisture could be lifted through gaps in

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720-469: The Black Brant has never had another failure, making it one of the most reliable rockets in history. Since then it has undergone continual evolution, and the current versions are the XI and XII, consisting of Black Brant V used as an upper stage, with Talos and Terrier boosters as lower stages. They have reached altitudes of more than 1,500 km (930 mi), which is above the ionosphere and well above

780-534: The Cheget , was brought to Russian President Boris Yeltsin , who then had to decide whether to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against the United States. It is the first and thus far only known incident where any nuclear-weapons state had its nuclear briefcase activated and prepared for launching an attack. On September 19, 2009, a Black Brant XII that was launched to study clouds caused numerous calls from

840-736: The Chelyabinsk superbolide entry of February 2013 (outside the NLC season) that were actually stratospheric dust reflections visible after sunset. Noctilucent clouds are composed of tiny crystals of water ice up to 100  nm in diameter and exist at a height of about 76 to 85 km (249,000 to 279,000 ft), higher than any other clouds in Earth's atmosphere. Clouds in the Earth's lower atmosphere form when water collects on particles, but mesospheric clouds may form directly from water vapour in addition to forming on dust particles. Data from

900-426: The Propulsion Test Vehicle system useful as a sounding rocket . To better suit this role, Bristol modified the design to be lighter and more tailored to the sounding rocket role. This became the Black Brant. CARDE launched a number of Black Brant rockets over the next few years, both the original Black Brant I design which could place a 68 kg (150 lb) payload to 150 km (93 mi) altitude, as well as

960-674: The Solar Mesosphere Explorer , mapped the distribution of the clouds between 1981 and 1986 with its ultraviolet spectrometer. The clouds were detected with a lidar in 1995 at Utah State University , even when they were not visible to the naked eye. The first physical confirmation that water ice is indeed the primary component of noctilucent clouds came from the HALOE instrument on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite in 2001. In 2001,

1020-479: The Swedish Odin satellite performed spectral analyses on the clouds, and produced daily global maps that revealed large patterns in their distribution. The AIM ( Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere ) satellite was launched on 25 April 2007. It was the first satellite dedicated to studying noctilucent clouds, and made its first observations a month later (25 May). Images taken by the satellite show shapes in

1080-484: The mesosphere at altitudes of around 76 to 85 km (249,000 to 279,000 ft). No confirmed record of their observation exists before 1885, although they may have been observed a few decades earlier by Thomas Romney Robinson in Armagh . There are now doubts concerning Robinson's out-of-season records, partly as a result of observations, from several points around high northern latitudes, of NLC-like phenomena after

1140-682: The summer solstice . This holds true for both hemispheres. Great variability in scattering is observed from day-to-day and year-to- year, but averaging over large time and space scales reveals a basic underlying symmetry and pattern. The long- term behaviour of polar mesospheric cloud frequency has been found to vary inversely with solar activity. PMC's have four major types based on physical structure and appearance. Type I veils are very tenuous and lack well-defined structure, somewhat like cirrostratus or poorly defined cirrus. Type II bands are long streaks that often occur in groups arranged roughly parallel to each other. They are usually more widely spaced than

1200-471: The tropopause , as well as forming from the reaction of methane with hydroxyl radicals in the stratosphere . The exhaust from Space Shuttles , in use between 1981 and 2011, which was almost entirely water vapour after the detachment of the Solid Rocket Booster at a height of about 46 km (151,000 ft), was found to generate minuscule individual clouds. About half of the vapour

1260-465: The 1960s, when direct rocket measurements began. These showed for the first time that the clouds' occurrence coincided with very low temperatures in the mesosphere. Noctilucent clouds were first detected from space by an instrument on the OGO -6 satellite in 1972. The OGO-6 observations of a bright scattering layer over the polar caps were identified as poleward extensions of these clouds. A later satellite,

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1320-434: The Earth. Since the naturally-occurring clouds only appear in summer, this experiment was conducted in mid-winter to assure that its results would not be mixed with a natural event. Observed from the ground, this phenomenon is known as noctilucent clouds. From satellites, PMCs are most frequently observed above 70–75° in latitude and have a season of 60 to 80 days duration centered about a peak which occurs about 20 days after

1380-506: The Sun is above the horizon. Satellite observations allow the very coldest parts of the polar mesosphere to be observed, all the way to the geographic pole. In the early 1970s, visible airglow photometers first scanned the atmospheric horizon throughout the summer polar mesospause region. This experiment, which flew on the OGO-6 satellite, was the first to trace noctilucent-like cloud layers across

1440-762: The Sun is below the horizon. Research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in June 2009 suggests that noctilucent clouds observed following the Tunguska Event of 1908 are evidence that the impact was caused by a comet. The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the United States Department of Defense Space Test Program (STP) conducted the Charged Aerosol Release Experiment (CARE) on September 19, 2009, using exhaust particles from

1500-436: The United States from New Jersey to Massachusetts . A 2018 experiment briefly created noctilucent clouds over Alaska, allowing ground-based measurements and experiments aimed at verifying computer simulations of the phenomenon. A suborbital NASA rocket was launched on 26 January 2018 by University of Alaska professor Richard Collins. It carried water-filled canisters, which were released at about 53 mi (85 km) above

1560-433: The altitude profile of scattering from clouds at two spectral channels (primarily) 265 nm and 296 nm. This phenomenon is now known as Polar Mesospheric Clouds. The general seasonal characteristics of polar mesospheric clouds are well established from the five years of continuous SME data. Over that period, data for four cloud ‘seasons’ in the north, and five ‘seasons’ in the south were recorded. In both hemispheres,

1620-518: The ash had settled out of the atmosphere, the noctilucent clouds persisted. Finally, the theory that the clouds were composed of volcanic dust was disproved by Malzev in 1926. In the years following their discovery, the clouds were studied extensively by Otto Jesse of Germany , who was the first to photograph them, in 1887, and seems to have been the one to coin the term "noctilucent cloud". His notes provide evidence that noctilucent clouds first appeared in 1885. He had been doing detailed observations of

1680-399: The atmosphere which are warmest in summer. Temperatures at latitudes equatorward of the boundary of detection never get low enough for water-ice to form. Polar mesospheric clouds generally increase in brightness and occurrence frequency with increasing latitude, from about 60 degrees to the highest latitudes observed (85 degrees). So far, no apparent dependence on longitude has been found, nor

1740-437: The bands or elements seen with cirrocumulus clouds. Type III billows are arrangements of closely spaced, roughly parallel short streaks that mostly resemble cirrus. Type IV whirls are partial or, more rarely, complete rings of cloud with dark centres. When mesospheric clouds are viewed above the atmosphere, the geometrical limitations of observing from the ground are significantly reduced. They may be observed ‘edge-on’ against

1800-421: The clouds are present. Other experiments have demonstrated that, at the extremely cold temperatures of a noctilucent cloud, sodium vapour can rapidly be deposited onto an ice surface. Noctilucent clouds are first known to have been observed in 1885, two years after the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa . It remains unclear whether their appearance had anything to do with the volcanic eruption or whether their discovery

1860-521: The clouds that are similar to shapes in tropospheric clouds, hinting at similarities in their dynamics. In the previous year, scientists with the Mars Express mission had announced their discovery of carbon dioxide –crystal clouds on Mars that extended to 100 km (330,000 ft) above the planet's surface. These are the highest clouds discovered over the surface of a rocky planet. Like noctilucent clouds on Earth, they can be observed only when

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1920-418: The clouds was first determined, via triangulation . That project was discontinued in 1896. In the decades after Otto Jesse's death in 1901, there were few new insights into the nature of noctilucent clouds. Wegener 's conjecture, that they were composed of water ice, was later shown to be correct. Study was limited to ground-based observations and scientists had very little knowledge of the mesosphere until

1980-416: The comparatively dark sky background, even in full daylight. The photometer field of view must be well baffled to avoid interference from the very bright Earth about a degree beneath the cloud layer. It is a much more difficult task to observe the clouds against the bright background of the illuminated Earth, although this has been achieved in the ultraviolet in the 200 to 300 nm spectral region, because of

2040-503: The de facto standard rocket for most Western-aligned militaries. In 1976, Australia and Canada through the National Research Council Canada (NRCC) agreed to launch a rocket from Woomera Test Range . The Black Brant VB rocket was launched there on 9 November for experiments in the ionosphere. Later, NASA would launch a number of Black Brant IX . At present, due to its 98% success rate, it remains one of

2100-421: The decrease in brightness of the clouds with the increase of ultraviolet radiation for the last two solar cycles. It has been found that changes in the clouds follow changes in the intensity of ultraviolet rays by about a year, but the reason for this long lag is not yet known. Noctilucent clouds are known to exhibit high radar reflectivity, in a frequency range of 50  MHz to 1.3 GHz. This behaviour

2160-675: The end of World War II in 1945 as the Canadian Armament Research and Development Establishment ( CARDE ), the intent was to keep the research teams built up during the war in Canada, as opposed to moving to the United States. Starting in 1951 CARDE implemented a major missile development program, eventually delivering two combat systems, the Velvet Glove air-to-air missile and the Heller anti-tank rocket. Neither

2220-652: The larger Black Brant II which first flew in October 1960, and the smaller but higher-altitude Black Brant III . The rocket's design emphasized reliability over payload and range. In July 1963 the much larger Black Brant V first flew, which was also used as a booster stage for the Black Brant III to make the Black Brant IV . The IV first flew in 1964, but failed, as did the next test launch. Aside from these two launches, which were corrected for,

2280-468: The lower layers of the atmosphere are in Earth's shadow , but while these very high clouds are still in sunlight . Recent studies suggest that increased atmospheric methane emissions produce additional water vapor through chemical reactions once the methane molecules reach the mesosphere – creating, or reinforcing existing, noctilucent clouds. They are the highest clouds in Earth's atmosphere, located in

2340-428: The lower sky background seen from space. Polar mesospheric cloud observations have revealed that the well-known phenomenon of the northward shifting with latitude of date of peak noctilucent cloud occurrence is partly due to the increased number of hours of noctilucent cloud visibility with latitude and partly due to an actual northward retreat of the boundary towards the end of the season. On 8 July 2018, NASA launched

2400-505: The mesosphere is coldest as a result of seasonally varying vertical winds, leading to cold summertime conditions in the upper mesosphere ( upwelling and adiabatic cooling ) and wintertime heating ( downwelling and adiabatic heating ). Therefore, they cannot be observed (even if they are present) inside the Polar circles because the Sun is never low enough under the horizon at this season at these latitudes. Noctilucent clouds form mostly near

2460-800: The most popular sounding rockets ever built. The rockets have been used repeatedly by the Canadian Space Agency and NASA. There is a 1:1 scale model of the Black Brant IX rocket in front of the head office of the Canadian Space Agency in Saint-Hubert, east of Montréal . A full-scale Black Brant VC is on display in the Science Gallery of The Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In 1995,

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2520-569: The new propellant as the basis for a new motor for existing 2.75-inch air-to-ground rockets. The result was the CRV-7 rocket, which had roughly twice the speed of the existing US design, and with enough energy to be able to puncture Warsaw Pact aircraft hangars. Production started at Bristol Aerospace in 1974, and the CRV-7 has been used by the Canadian and other air forces since that time. In 1969

2580-562: The northeastern U.S. reporting "strange lights in the sky". NASA reported that the light came from an artificial noctilucent cloud formed by the exhaust particles of the rocket's fourth stage at an altitude of about 278 km (173 mi). The II was the first rocket for scientific use and was ready in 1960. DRDC Valcartier DRDC Valcartier is a major Canadian military research station at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier , Quebec , one of nine centres making up Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC). Originally formed at

2640-468: The northern hemisphere, but fewer than 100 times in the southern. Southern hemisphere noctilucent clouds are fainter and occur less frequently; additionally the southern hemisphere has a lower population and less land area from which to make observations. These clouds may be studied from the ground, from space, and directly by sounding rocket . Also, some noctilucent clouds are made of smaller crystals, 30 nm or less, which are invisible to observers on

2700-606: The orbits of the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station . The propellant designs developed by CARDE in the Black Brant program were the highest performing solid fuels of their day. Bristol then placed this propellant in a new 70 mm (2.8 in) rocket to form the CRV7 , the first rocket capable of penetrating standard Warsaw Pact aircraft hangars. The CRV7 has since gone on to become

2760-461: The path of the sunlight illuminating the noctilucent cloud. They can appear as featureless bands, but frequently show distinctive patterns such as streaks, wave-like undulations, and whirls. They are considered a "beautiful natural phenomenon". Noctilucent clouds may be confused with cirrus clouds , but appear sharper under magnification. Those caused by rocket exhausts tend to show colours other than silver or blue, because of iridescence caused by

2820-495: The polar cap. The very bright scattering layer was seen in full daylight conditions, and was identified as the poleward extension of noctilucent clouds. In the early 1980s, the layer was observed again from a satellite, the Solar Mesospheric Explorer (SME). On board this satellite was an ultraviolet spectrometer, which mapped the distributions of clouds over the time period 1981 to 1986. The experiment measured

2880-413: The polar regions, because the mesosphere is coldest there. Clouds in the southern hemisphere are about 1 km (3,300 ft) higher than those in the northern hemisphere. Ultraviolet radiation from the Sun breaks water molecules apart, reducing the amount of water available to form noctilucent clouds. The radiation is known to vary cyclically with the solar cycle and satellites have been tracking

2940-410: The season begins about one month before summer solstice and ends about two months afterwards. Since there are no biases due to such factors as changing number of hours of visibility, weather conditions, etc. this is a ‘true’ behaviour. It is believed to be a result of the fact that summertime mesopause region becomes coldest during this period causing water-ice to form, in contrast to most other regions of

3000-457: The southern hemisphere. They are very faint and tenuous, and may be observed only in twilight around sunrise and sunset when the clouds of the lower atmosphere are in shadow, but the noctilucent cloud is illuminated by the Sun . They are best seen when the Sun is between 6° and 16° below the horizon. Although noctilucent clouds occur in both hemispheres, they have been observed thousands of times in

3060-626: The thermosphere into the colder mesosphere, which occupies the region of the atmosphere just below. Although this mechanism is the cause of individual noctilucent clouds, it is not thought to be a major contributor to the phenomenon as a whole. As the mesosphere contains very little moisture, approximately one hundred millionth that of air from the Sahara , and is extremely thin, the ice crystals can form only at temperatures below about −120 °C (−184 °F). This means that noctilucent clouds form predominantly during summer when, counterintuitively,

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3120-467: The uniform size of the water droplets produced. Noctilucent clouds may be seen at latitudes of 50° to 65°. They seldom occur at lower latitudes (although there have been sightings as far south as Paris , Utah , Italy , Turkey and Spain ), and closer to the poles it does not get dark enough for the clouds to become visible. They occur during summer, from mid-May to mid-August in the northern hemisphere and between mid-November and mid-February in

3180-533: The unusual sunsets caused by the Krakatoa eruption the previous year and firmly believed that, if the clouds had been visible then, he would undoubtedly have noticed them. Systematic photographic observations of the clouds were organized in 1887 by Jesse, Foerster , and Stolze and, after that year, continuous observations were carried out at the Berlin Observatory . During this research, the height of

3240-494: The very small albedo of the earth in this part of spectrum. American and Soviet astronauts observed the phenomenon from space as early as 1970. Most observations are reported from the night side of the orbit and the observer is looking towards the twilight sector. At this time the observer's eye is dark-adapted and polar mesospheric clouds would appear with maximum contrast against a comparatively dark background. Soviet astronauts have reported sightings of mesospheric clouds even when

3300-623: The way up to the mesosphere. These images would aid in studying turbulence in the atmosphere, and consequently better weather forecasting . NASA uses AIM satellite to study these noctilucent clouds, which always occur during the summer season near the poles. However, tomographic analyses of AIM satellite indicate that there is a spatial negative correlation between albedo and wave‐induced altitude. Noctilucent clouds are generally colourless or pale blue, although occasionally other colours including red and green have been observed. The characteristic blue colour comes from absorption by ozone in

3360-420: Was accepted for production, but the basic research was used with local defence contractors to build up familiarity with the new technologies. Starting in 1955 a serious effort to equip Canada with a useful anti–ballistic missile system was undertaken, along with research into the problems of detection and tracking, hypersonic flight, and fuels suitable for use in an interceptor missile. As part of this project

3420-412: Was due to more people observing the spectacular sunsets caused by the volcanic debris in the atmosphere. Studies have shown that noctilucent clouds are not caused solely by volcanic activity, although dust and water vapour could be injected into the upper atmosphere by eruptions and contribute to their formation. Scientists at the time assumed the clouds were another manifestation of volcanic ash, but after

3480-550: Was quite heavy, as it was designed to be able to accommodate a wide variety of engine burning times, propellant loadings and launch angles in keeping with its role as a test vehicle for ABM systems development. The first test flight took place only two years later from the Churchill Rocket Research Range in September 1959. CARDE's attention later turned to long-distance communications and they found

3540-420: Was released into the thermosphere , usually at altitudes of 103 to 114 km (338,000 to 374,000 ft). In August 2014, a SpaceX Falcon 9 also caused noctilucent clouds over Orlando, Florida after a launch. The exhaust can be transported to the Arctic region in little over a day, although the exact mechanism of this very high-speed transfer is unknown. As the water migrates northward, it falls from

3600-548: Was renamed " Defence R&D Canada – Valcartier " when the overseeing organisation became the Defence Research and Development Canada agency. Other DRDC locations in Canada : Noctilucent cloud Noctilucent clouds (NLCs) , or night shining clouds , are tenuous cloud -like phenomena in the upper atmosphere of Earth . When viewed from space, they are called polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) , detectable as

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