Optical studies of rocket exhaust trails and artificial noctilucent clouds produced by Soyuz rocket launches
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Detailed tracing of an exhaust plume from a rocket's initial trajectory is a scientifically and diagnostically useful technique. It can provide detailed information on the atmosphere's mean winds, wind shears, turbulent regime, and physical state over a wide altitude range from 50 to 200 km. We analyze Soyuz rocket exhaust plumes from Plesetsk on 21 May 2009 and 27 June 2011, which uncovered significantly different atmospheric states and underlying dynamics. The first case showed highly dynamical conditions in the mesosphere, characterized by vortex structures, wind shears, and small‐scale turbulent eddies. The estimated turbulent energy dissipation rates ranged 330–460 mW kg−1. A characteristic balloon‐shaped trail was observed at altitudes between 105 and 160 km, having rapid expansion rates of 500–800 m s−1 over the time period of 2 min which can be explained by complex gas dynamic processes in the rocket wake involving the collision of shock waves. In the second case, we show evidence that the rocket exhaust trail persisted without any changes during its motion from Plesetsk via Denmark to the UK for 9 h, indicating extremely stable atmospheric conditions. This case introduces a new state of the summer mesosphere—remarkably quiet conditions, probably never observed before. The rocket plumes studied, related to the initial rocket trajectory, are essentially twilight phenomena as seen from the ground using wideband spectrum cameras, that is, the Sun should be below the horizon by 6°. For the first time, we analyze the dynamics of rocket exhaust products at the initial trajectory in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere using detailed photographic imaging taken from the ground.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".