Annular eclipse [image credit: Smrgeog @ Wikipedia]
This is part 1 – part 2 is next April.
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A NASA sounding rocket mission will launch three rockets during the 2023 annular eclipse in October to study how the sudden drop in sunlight affects our upper atmosphere, says Phys.org.
On Oct. 14, 2023, viewers of an annular solar eclipse in the Americas will experience the sun dimming to 10% its normal brightness, leaving only a bright “ring of fire” of sunlight as the moon eclipses the sun.
Those in the vicinity of the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, however, might also notice sudden bright streaks across the sky: trails of scientific rockets, hurtling toward the eclipse’s shadow.
A NASA sounding rocket mission will launch three rockets to study how the sudden drop in sunlight affects our upper atmosphere.
The mission, known as Atmospheric Perturbations around the Eclipse Path or APEP, is led by Aroh Barjatya, a professor of engineering physics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he directs the Space and Atmospheric Instrumentation Lab.
Some 50 miles up and beyond, the air itself becomes electric. Scientists call this atmospheric layer the ionosphere because it is where the UV component of sunlight can pry electrons away from atoms to form a sea of high-flying ions and electrons.
The sun’s constant energy keeps these mutually attracted particles separated throughout the day. But as the sun dips below the horizon, many recombine into neutral atoms for the night, only to part ways again at sunrise.
During a solar eclipse, the sunlight vanishes and reappears over a small part of the landscape almost at once. In a flash, ionospheric temperature and density drop, then rise again, sending waves rippling through the ionosphere.
“If you think of the ionosphere as a pond with some gentle ripples on it, the eclipse is like a motorboat that suddenly rips through the water,” Barjatya said. “It creates a wake immediately underneath and behind it, and then the water level momentarily goes up as it rushes back in.”
During the 2017 total solar eclipse visible across North America, instruments many hundreds of miles outside the eclipse’s path detected atmospheric changes. So did critical infrastructure like GPS and communications satellites that we rely on every day.
“All satellite communications go through the ionosphere before they reach Earth,” Barjatya said. “As we become more dependent on space-based assets, we need to understand and model all perturbations in the ionosphere.”
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This won’t be the only APEP launch. The APEP rockets launched in New Mexico will be recovered and then relaunched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, on April 8, 2024, when a total solar eclipse will cross the U.S. from Texas to Maine. The April launches are farther from the eclipse path than for the October annular eclipse, but will present an opportunity to measure just how widespread the effects of an eclipse are.
After these two eclipses, the next total solar eclipse over the contiguous U.S. is not until 2044, and the next annular eclipse is not until 2046.
“We have to make hay while the sun shines … or, I suppose for eclipse science, while it doesn’t,” Barjatya joked. “In all seriousness though, this data set will reveal the widespread effects that eclipses have on the ionosphere at the smallest spatial scales.”
Full article here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Well fair enough, in the interest of Science: but what’s about that in the news this morning: US fines someone exorbitant amount for creating space Junk ?
UK’s talktv seemed to think it somewhat amusing
Reminder Alert: OCT 4th FEMA Test.
What a load of bollox. An eclipse lasts 30 minutes. The atmosphere suffers loss of sunlight for 12hours every day! While the poles lose it for 6months every year. I could think of much better ways of wasting money.