FRANKLINSTEIN.

CONTRIBUTING TO A GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF LIGHTNING, ONE ROCKET AT A TIME. 

On average 44,000 thunderstorms light up the skies globally every day, pumping out roughly 100 lightning bolts to the earth every second. These spectacular channels of electricity keep the ground even with negative charge and maintain the ionosphere's positive charge. Lightning completes the global electric circuit.

Cloud-to-ground lightning is a hazard to recreational and commercial interests. Although the number of lightning related injuries and fatalities is on the decline, dozens of people are still killed by lightning in the United States each year. The initial and final discharges of a storm have proven to be the most dangerous, and are responsible for a large percentage of lightning related injuries and casualties. 

In recent years, there have been leaps and bounds in our understanding of lightning, but for each new discovery there are 10 remaining mysteries. Ben Franklin's kite experiment was the starting point 250 years ago, and we still don't know precisely how lightning works. For all we know, lightning may as well be tossed down at us from Zeus. 

Atmospheric scientists do have a basic understanding of the mechanisms that trigger lightning. Positive charges build up near the top of the thundercloud, as negative charges build at the bottom of the cloud. Electrical attraction between the opposite charges eventually grow strong enough to overcome the air's natural resistance to electrical flow.

Negative charges then stream down from the bottom of the cloud into the sky below and move quickly toward the ground, forming a conductive path called a "stepped leader." The stepped leader connects to "streamers" of positive charges surging up from the ground, completing an electrical circuit. This enables negative charges to flow from the cloud to the ground along the current they have formed. This enormous discharge of electricity is what we see as lightning.

How all this happens, remains a mystery. The consensus among scientists, is that charge separation is mainly achieved by a process called non-inductive charging mechanism. There is a mix of ice and water up around 15,000 feet or so. Somehow they interact with each other in updrafts filled with turbulent energy. The water and ice separate into oppositely charged particles. The lighter particles acquire positive charge and zip to the top of the cloud, while the heavier ones are negative and fall down towards the base of the cloud..

Another big unknown is the "lightning initiation problem". The electric fields inside lightning producing storms consistently yield peak values that are much too weak to break down air's natural insulation properties. So how does it all break down?

How lightning can propagate for miles through the air is also a mystery. It's amazing that for a brief instant, air is turned from an insulator, into a conductor. 

Those are some of the questions we will be trying to help determine an answer for with our lightning rockets in 2015. Our probe for the 2015 storm season, Franklinstein, will be equipped with an on board air ion counter, to measure the strength of the positively charged ions near the surface. This device will be monitored via first person view camera system. Once the values are maximized, the rocket initiation sequence will begin.

The first rocket will fire into the air, attached to the probe by a wire, It will become the path of least resistance, making it a prime target for lightning to travel through. Moments after the first rocket is fired, a second detached rocket will fire, containing instruments to measure the electrical fields near the clouds. Back at the surface, our probe will measure the air temperature, dew point, wind speed, and decibel level from the associated thunder. It will also be equipped with high speed video cameras, as well as a DSLR that will shoot continuously, so we can hopefully capture any streamers that may occur. 

With the data gathered during our experiments, we hope to contribute to a greater understanding of what causes lightning to form, the process it goes through to overcome air's natural insulating properties, and exactly what is occurring at the surface before, during, and after a lightning strike.