STATUS -- No launch today, though it got quite interesting scientifically. The good news is that the solar wind continues to cooperate very nicely. The bad news is that the ground winds are not. It's a bit ironic that we want calm ground winds, but energetic solar wind. The ground winds varied between 30 and 40 mph, depending on who was reporting the wind speeds. This meant that neither rocket was able to be elevated but, instead, both rested quietly "in the barn". See below for more drama related to the winds. The solar wind continues to carry a strong magnetic field, very good densities and an acceptable speed. The net result is that the allsky camera in Ny Alesund (100 km to the north of us) recorded what likely was a set of Poleward Moving Auroral Forms (PMAFs). This is the type of aurora we are hoping to launch into, but cloudy skies overhead here (and contamination from moonlight in Ny Alesund) have made it hard to see what is going on. Things were further complicated by the surprising persistence of the aurora given the mostly northward direction of the solar wind magnetic field. In spite of the sporadic and brief excursions with a southward magnetic field, the Ny Alesund cameras showed consistent PMAFs and the EISCAT radar showed ion upflow for about an hour and 20 minutes. The bottom line is that the ground winds at the Andøya Space Center forced us to "stand down", so there was never really a chance of launching - just lots of interesting science discussions.

OUTLOOK -- Things are looking up, of course! The sun is cooperating, with both coronal holes and active regions moving into favorable positions. It turns out that the forecast for the weather (winds!) show significant improvement over the next few days, with the solar wind continuing to cooperate. Without being overly optimistic, I would say that we will be looking forward to a very exciting next few days!! Both rockets are ready to go and it is even possible that both get launched on the same day (ok, that is probably too optimistic but it's true).

Other -- Talk about winds!!! We owe a huge thanks to the crew from UNIS (Fred Sigernes, Mikko Syrjäsuo and Noora Partamies) for helping us get to the KHO observatory. Fred dug up an extra beltwagon this morning and drove us up to KHO from town. To explain: we generally drive about 15 minutes to reach the base of the mountain where KHO is (about 1700 feet). We normally drive up the switchbacks to about 1000 feet elevation and then hop into a beltwagon for the last part of the ride. Today, because we expected the drifts in the switchbacks to be so big, we drove up the mountain with a second beltwagon from sea level. The photo below was taken (by Noora) when we were entering the KHO. As we got close to KHO, we even lost sight of the reflector sticks that mark the track to KHO (I see the basis for a horror movie here), but eventually figured out where we were.

On the way back "home" at the end of the day, we came across a dogsled.

Keep in mind that this is Sunday noon - this is how the locals spend their Sunday afternoons!!! Who needs daylight??

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