Impact of meteor showers on mesospheric smoke particles

We propose to carry out a rocket campaign in 2008, in collaboration with Leibniz-Institut für Atmosphärenphysik (IAP), Germany, to study smoke particles in the middle atmosphere. The rockets will be launched from Andøya Rocket Range during and shortly af ter a meteor shower. The primary goal is to measure the change in smoke particle density caused by the meteor shower and thus attempt to provide the first direct evidence that smoke particles are of extraterrestrial origin. Additionally, the rockets wil l measure the charge of the particles as well as the ambient electron and ion densities, addressing the controversial issue of the smoke particle charge state. The proposed campaign is the last part of the ECOMA project, which also includes a rocket campa ign carried out in September 2006 and one scheduled for August 2007. The campaign in 2006 measured smoke particles in the absence of a meteor shower, when the middle atmosphere was too warm to allow ice particles to form. The 2007 summer campaign will f ocus on the interplay between smoke and ice particles, launching rockets when ice particles, forming noctilucent clouds (NLC) and polar mesosphere summer echoes (PMSE), are present. This application is for the 2008 campaign and the data analysis and inter pretation. - Since the submission of the original application in June 2007, we have contacted O. Havnes of University in Tromsø and Kristina Lynch of Dartmouth College, to include their charged aerosol particle detectors on one of the ECOMA payloads, givi ng a first-time direct comparison of these two with each other and with the ECOMA instrument from IAP.