ROCKET exhaust is revealing the secrets of a part of the atmosphere so neglected that it has been nicknamed the “ignorosphere”. The region extends from 90 to 120 kilometres above the Earth.
“Balloons don’t go that high and satellites don’t dip down that low,” says James Russell, from Hampton University in Virginia.
Now Russell and his team have found they can measure wind speeds at these high altitudes by tracking the trails of water vapour left by rockets as they shoot into space. Using a remote sensing satellite orbiting 625 kilometres above the Earth, they are able to detect the…
