Skip to comments.NASA Rocket to Create Clouds Tuesday Posted on
09/15/2009 6:25:43 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY A rocket experiment
set to launch Tuesday aims to create artificial clouds at the
outermost layers of Earth's atmosphere. The project, called the
Charged Aerosol Release Experiment (CARE), plans to trigger
cloud formation around the rocket's exhaust particles. The
clouds are intended to simulate naturally-occurring phenomena
called noctilucent clouds, which are the highest clouds in the
atmosphere. "This is really essentially at the boundary of
space," said Wayne Scales, a scientist at Virginia Tech who will
use computer models to study the physics of the artificial dust
cloud as it's released. "Nothing like this has been done before
and that's why everybody's really excited about it." The
experiment is the first attempt to create artificial noctilucent
clouds. A previous spacecraft, called Aeronomy of Ice in the
Mesosphere (AIM), launched in 2007 to observe the natural clouds
from space. CARE is slated