RENU 3 Rocket Blasts Off With UNH Technology on Board
10 UNH-built space instruments will study aurora, sun’s impacts on satellites
Sunday, December 14, 2025
  • Rocket launches above a snowy scene.
  • A student works on an electrical component for a rocket launch
  • An overhead view of a large hangar where people are working on a rocket
  • A group of eight people stand in front of a rocket that is suspended above them in the background
  • A male student in a blue work shirt stands in front of a piece of a rocket featuring exposed electrical parts
  • Two men in blue work shirts use tools to work on a silver metallic-looking component to be included in a rocket launch
  • An overhead view of a rocket in a garage or hangar space, with three men and one woman walking around it
  • A glass bubble visible in front of snowy ground and a deep blue sky in the arctic

As the Northern Lights danced across New Hampshire’s skies last month, a team of UNH space scientists and students was nearly 4,000 miles away in the Arctic, igniting their own marvel: a rocket packed with cutting-edge space instruments that launched into the upper atmosphere where those majestic lights are born.

The goal of the mission wasn’t skygazing, though. The UNH-led team of international collaborators gathered at Norway’s Andøya Space Center to launch the third iteration of the Rocket Experiment for Neutral Upwelling, or RENU 3. Funded by NASA, the RENU 3 sounding rocket mission was designed to measure the complex, underlying physics behind the Aurora borealis and the heating of the very high-altitude portion of our atmosphere — a process known as neutral upwelling that contributes to satellite drag, slowing down these spacecrafts and decreasing their altitudes. This effect is much more pronounced during magnetic storms, when satellite and GPS communications can also be disrupted.

The RENU 3 mission, which carried 10 instruments designed and built at UNH, was led by UNH research professor of physics Marc Lessard. James Clemmons, UNH professor of physics and astronomy, was a co-investigator on the mission, and it was the first time the duo directly collaborated on the same mission. In addition to the team at Andøya, two UNH graduate students were 620 miles to the north in Svalbard to record a different set of measurements. In total, 10 UNH graduate students and five UNH undergraduates contributed to the mission.

From just a short span of 15 minutes in which the rocket ascended to the correct altitude — almost 300 miles above the ground — the instruments collected a trove of data that the UNH team will now begin poring over.

“We are very fortunate to be able to build upon the UNH sounding rocket program,” Lessard says. “Ever since the earliest UNH rocket launches in 1964, UNH scientists have continued to explore the near-Earth space environment, to train both undergraduate and graduate students, and to develop new space-flight instruments. It is a unique opportunity."

Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS)

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