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Completed TRL 3 (started at 1, targeting 3)
The mesosphere/lower thermosphere (50-120 km) is a critical region between the Earth’s atmosphere and space, which is woefully under-sampled as it is too high for balloons and too low for direct measurements with satellite probes. Mating two small surplus rocket motors together can provide a fast, agile, cost-effective means to study the mesosphere / thermosphere. The Sounding Rocket Program Office (SRPO) and the Geospace science community both endorse this proposal to develop the 2nd stage ignition system for such a vehicle. The SRPO has offered follow-up funding for this effort.
The M-CDI is well aligned with Goddard 2040 Vector 1: Advance Multidisciplinary Space Science as it provides safe, reliable, and secure infrastructure for access to space via suborbital launch vehicles. This IRAD would position SRPO to have an ignition unit capable of igniting a rocket motor without GSE, allowing higher tempo missions to be desired for mesospheric rockets. Developing these high-tempo missions will bring increased science similar to how Swarm distributed telemetry systems can provide multipoint in-situ measurement; this will allow multi-temporal measurements, as multiple rockets will be able to be launched throughout science events such as eclipses or Aurora E-Field events.
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