SpEED Demon was a NASA funded sounding rocket technology-demonstration risk-reduction mission that tested a comprehensive science instrumentation package with a sounding rocket launch on August 23,2022 from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The launch occurred at 9:16 pm local time.

SpEED Demon stands for ‘Sporadic-E ElectroDynamics Demonstration’ mission. The exact same payload will fly on the NASA funded SEED mission, with the scientific goal of studying low-latitude Sporadic-E layers.

The main payload consisted of a Sweeping Langmuir Probe for plasma density and electron temperature, a pair of multi-Needle Langmuir Probes for 5KHz electron density, Positive Ion Probe for relative ion density, ionization gauges and sensitive accelerometers for background neutral density, a suite of sensitive magnetometers and a pair of electric field measurements. The main payload also ejected four sub-payloads, each carrying ion density measurement along with a sensitive magnetometer and an accelerometer capable of performing ‘falling sphere’ analogous neutral density measurements. The launch was supported by ground-based observations from VIPIR Dynasonde as well as MIT Millstone Haystack ISR.

Late August is the tail end of the Norther Hemisphere Sporadic-E (Es) Layer season, and SpEED Demon was launched into an Es layer as detected by VIPIR radar .

Most instruments were operated at 5KHz sampling rate giving a better than 30 cm spatial resolution of most physical quantities: plasma and neutral density, magnetic and electric fields.

Versions of the mNLP, PIP and FPP instruments are also being built for the NASA ESCAPADE dual satellite mission to Mars. Thus, this mission will also increase the TRL of these instruments for the interplanetary missions.

Results of the mission are being prepared for multiple journal manuscripts.  First cut results from various instruments were presented at AGU Fall Meeting 2022 and CEDAR Workshop in Summer 2023. These are linked below.

An overall payload overview with instrument performance characteristics as presented by Clayton_AGU_2022.

Magnetic field measurements inside the Sporadic E layer by Milford_AGU_2022.

Detailed analysis and presentation of the simultaneous multi-point density measurements from ejected subpayloads by Valentine_CEDAR_2023.

Neutral density measurements from falling cylinder accelerometer data by Graves_CEDAR_2023

SpEED Demon Mission Patch

SpEED Demon sounding rocket payload with booms deployed after spin testing. Peter Ribbens (MS Student) and Nathan Graves (PhD student) with Dr. Barjatya and Dr. Clayton during I&T at Wallops Island.
Credits: NASA Wallops/Berit Bland