ISRO launches sounding rocket
- Posted By
10Pointer
- Categories
Science & Technology
- Published
15th Mar, 2021
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Context
- The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched a sounding rocket to study attitudinal variations in the neutral winds and plasma dynamics from the Sriharikota spaceport.
About the Sounding Rocket
- Background: The launch of the first sounding rocket from Thumba near Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala on 21 November 1963, marked the beginning of the Indian Space Programme.
- Function: Sounding rockets are used to probe the atmosphere in situ using rocket-borne instrumentation.
- Initial rockets: The first rockets were two-stage rockets imported from Russia (M-100) and France (Centaure).
- Series: ISRO has developed a series of sounding rockets called the Rohini series:
- RH-200
- RH-300
- RH-560 (number in the name indicating the diameter of the rocket in mm)
- Structure: Sounding rockets are one or two-stage solid propellant rockets used for probing the upper atmospheric regions and for space research.
- They serve as easily affordable platforms to test or prove prototypes of new components or subsystems intended for use in launch vehicles and satellites.
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Neutral Tides:
- These are tides generated in the stratosphere.
- Long-term trends in tides may be linked with changes in the stratosphere.
- Tides also have a great impact on the equatorial ionosphere through the dynamo effect.
- They are strongly affected by changes in that region such as:
- Gravity wave activities
- Quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) in the equatorial region
- Sudden stratosphere warming in the high latitudes
Plasma and its dynamics
- Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter.
- It consists of a gas of ions and free electrons.
- Plasma can be artificially generated by heating a neutral gas or subjecting it to a strong electromagnetic field.
- Plasma Dynamics: At very high temperatures, above 10,000°K, gas will be ionized.
- The properties of ionized gas, or plasma, differ considerably from those of neutral gas.
- In plasma dynamics, we need to study simultaneously the electromagnetic fields and the gas-dynamic field.
- Many new phenomena occur due to the interaction of gas-dynamic and electromagnetic forces.
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