The NRL Solar Physics Sounding Rocket Program: Trailblazers for the Solar-C and Solar Orbiter Missions

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Space Science Division (SSD) sounding rocket program enables cutting-edge scientific research through the development of low-cost, short-schedule, highly advanced suborbital payloads. Each sounding rocket campaign provides a low-cost and accordingly low-risk test bed for the technology development of future flight projects. Our approach is to maintain a continuous hardware development program through a successful cycle of concept inception, competition in the NASA LCAS (Low-Cost Access to Space) program, instrument development, launch, and science analysis. Currently, SSD has three active sounding rocket programs. HERSCHEL (HElium Resonance Scattering in the Corona & HELio-sphere) was successfully flown in 2010 and measured the global helium absolute abundance in the solar corona for the first time, linking solar surface and in-situ abundance. The HERSCHEL experiment served as the pathfinder for the METIS coronagraph that will fly on Solar Orbiter. VERIS (VEry high Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) is scheduled for launch in August 2013 and will provide the first spectroscopic observations of the solar atmosphere at spatial scales not yet observed by previous EUV spectrographs. VERIS is the test bed for a flight hardware concept to be proposed to NASA for the upcoming JAXA Solar-C mission. VAULT (Very high Angular resolution Ultraviolet Telescope), scheduled for re-flight in Fall 2013, will provide ultra high-resolution images of the Lyman-alpha layer of the upper chromosphere where much of the energy required for explosive events is stored. Previous VAULT sounding rocket flights provided the first sub-arcsecond solar images from space and led to the development of a Lyman-alpha telescope for the Solar Orbiter mission. Through these next sounding rocket flights NRL SSD will provide scientific leadership in the budding field of upper chromospheric research.