STATUS -- To begin with, yesterday (Dec 12), was very tough on us. Winds continued to be a problem in Andenes and snow continued to be a problem at KHO and at Ny Alesund. The solar wind was mostly pretty good, but getting everything aligned just didn't seem possible. The rocket was elevated three separate times, trying to be ready for launch while lowering it to keep it protected from the nasty weather. The day ended with the count being held at T-2 with the aurora being just slightly off our nominal trajectory and refusing to move.

We began this morning yet again with light snow here in Longyearbyen. When we got out of the beltwagon at KHO it was still snowing, but it was possible to see aurora in the cameras. The solar wind has weakened a bit but was still respectable (in terms of energy being tramsported) and with a good magnetic field orientation. The KHO folks worked very hard to clear the domes, sacrificing a couple bottles of Rasputin Vodka to make an antifreeze to deice the domes. The winds at Andenes were acceptable (not by much) and it was not too long after the window opened that we knew it would be a great day. In my notes, I wrote that "snow was falling fairly hard" at 5:45 and then that we believed we were very near (or inside of) the cusp at 6:48. It was about then that we started seeing the Poleward Moving Auroral Forms that we had been looking for. These PMAFs are arcs that get launched poleward every 10 or 20 minutes or so and the ones that we were seeing were right on our trajectory. We watched a couple of these go by (to give time to heat the ionosphere and thermosphere) and then picked the count up, dropping from T-15 to T-2 minutes. We didn't sit at T-2 for very long before it was clear that we had steady aurora and so we called for a launch, which took place at 7:34 UT.

The rocket flew east of its nominal trajectory, which made the situation even better for us in terms of hitting bright aurora. It seems like any issues we might have had with the payload are insignificant or minimal. I know that we have very good ion and electron data, electric fields, etc., etc., etc. We now have a lot of work to do in terms of trying to analyze the data, but that is a great feeling.

Final Score:
Aurora Gods: 2
Science Team (with assists from many really excellent people): 1000000000000000000....

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