Listening to the nightly news, you'll often hear the weather forecaster mention jet streams moving weather systems around. These are located about 10 km above sea level, where they also affect commercial aircraft. Much higher up, around 100 km above the surface of the Earth, there is a high-altitude jet stream that moves a lot of air around from the equator to the poles—at nearly 100 m/s. We don’t understand this jet stream as well, but it coincides with regions of strong electrical turbulence that can affect radio and satellite communications.

In order to study the processes that generates the high-altitude jet stream, NASA is launching the Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment (ATREX). Five sounding rockets will be launched in five minutes from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia between March 14 and April 4, depending on the weather. (Sounding rockets are specifically designed for sub-orbital research, reaching altitudes between 50 and 1500 km.) The five rockets include two Terrier-Improved Orions, one Terrier-Oriole, and two Terrier-Improved Malemutes.

The ATREX rockets will release a chemical tracer into the jet stream, producing white milky clouds that scientists will use to visualize the winds. These clouds will also be visible to the public for up to 20 minutes along the Eastern Seaboard, from New Jersey to South Carolina. Instruments on two of the rockets will also measure the atmospheric pressure and temperature at the altitude of the high-speed jet stream.