Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
A NASA sounding rocket launched from Poker Flat Research Range at 11:23 a.m. Thursday in a continuing mission that uses X-rays to study the sun.The NASA Black Brant IX rocket carried the Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager to record large solar flares. The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute owns Poker Flat, located at Mile 30 Steese Highway, and operates it under a contract with NASA.This mission, called FOXSI-5, is led by assistant research physicist Juan Camilo Buitrago-Casas of the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. Buitrago-Casas has been involved with three of the previous four FOXSI missions. This is his first as the lead scientist.FOXSI 5 LAUNCH
A NASA sounding rocket launched from Poker Flat Research Range at 11:23 a.m. Thursday in a continuing mission that uses X-rays to study the sun.The NASA Black Brant IX rocket carried the Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager to record large solar flares. The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute owns Poker Flat, located at Mile 30 Steese Highway, and operates it under a contract with NASA.This mission, called FOXSI-5, is led by assistant research physicist Juan Camilo Buitrago-Casas of the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. Buitrago-Casas has been involved with three of the previous four FOXSI missions. This is his first as the lead scientist.FOXSI 5 LAUNCH
