NASA Wallops launches FOXSI-5 from Alaska

A NASA sounding rocket carrying the Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager, or FOXSI-5, launched from Poker Flat Research Range north of Fairbanks, Alaska, at 11:23 a.m. on Thursday, May 14, 2026, according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The Black Brant IX mission was designed to record X-rays from large solar flares during a short suborbital flight, part of a NASA-led effort to study how the sun releases energy. NASA’s sounding-rocket missions page had listed a daytime launch window of May 1 to May 15 from Poker Flat for the mission. The launch was managed through NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, while Poker Flat is operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks under contract with NASA. ### Why did this rocket go to Alaska instead of Wallops, Virginia? Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska was the launch site for FOXSI-5, not Wallops Island in Virginia. The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute owns Poker Flat and operates it under a contract with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, which is part of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, UAF said. (uaf.edu) NASA’s Wallops facility provides launch-range services for missions flown from multiple sites, according to NASA’s Wallops page. In the case of FOXSI-5, the mission page and UAF launch notices both identified Poker Flat as the launch location. ### What was FOXSI-5 trying to catch during a brief flight? FOXSI-5 was built to observe large solar flares in progress by recording their X-ray emissions with high sensitivity, UAF and the FOXSI project page said. (uaf.edu) The mission is the fifth flight in the FOXSI series and a reflight of the FOXSI-4 experiment with updated parts, according to the project page. (nasa.gov) Juan Camilo Buitrago-Casas of the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory is the principal investigator for the mission, NASA and UAF said. UAF described him as an assistant research physicist who had worked on three of the previous four FOXSI missions and is serving as lead scientist for the first time. (uaf.edu) ### Did the team actually see flare activity during the launch? Buitrago-Casas said after the flight that the team “got lucky” because an older but still-active solar region rotated back into view as several spots on the sun erupted. He said that gave researchers an “unusual multi-point snapshot” of solar flare activity during the mission. (uaf.edu) “Seeing science data coming down on every detector during the flight was an incredible feeling for the whole team,” Buitrago-Casas said, according to UAF. He also said the team had been standing by on the pad for two weeks and launched with only two days left in the window. ### What do scientists learn from X-rays from solar flares? (uaf.edu) Solar flares emit X-rays, and FOXSI is designed to record them at high sensitivity, UAF said. Buitrago-Casas said X-rays are useful because they show “energetic and powerful dynamics and phenomena” in the sun’s corona, especially during solar flares, which he called the most powerful explosions in the solar system. (uaf.edu) UAF said solar flares are often accompanied by coronal mass ejections, clouds of charged plasma that can travel into space at up to millions of miles per hour. When that plasma is directed toward Earth, it can interact with the planet’s magnetic field, producing auroras and, in stronger events, affecting satellites and communications, UAF said. (uaf.edu) ### Why was the timing important in May 2026? NASA and UAF said the mission was scheduled during the first half of May, when the team would wait for solar conditions suitable for launch. The FOXSI project page said the broader campaign structure was intended to give scientists multiple chances to catch a flare in progress rather than launch on a fixed timetable. (uaf.edu) Buitrago-Casas said the wait was part of the mission design. “Solar flares don't run on rocket schedules,” he said, according to UAF. “You wait, you watch, you adapt.” ### What happens after the flight? NASA’s sounding-rocket missions page lists FOXSI-5 as part of the agency’s 2026 mission schedule, and UAF said the May 14 launch was part of a continuing NASA-led program to study the sun. (uaf.edu) The next step is analysis of the X-ray data returned during the flight by the Berkeley-led science team and NASA partners. (uaf.edu) UAF identified Buitrago-Casas and NASA Goddard spokesperson Sarah Frazier as contacts on the post-launch release. NASA and UAF have been posting mission information through their public mission pages and launch updates channels tied to Poker Flat and the sounding-rocket program. (uaf.edu)