Low-Pressure Electrical Discharge Experiment to Simulate High-Altitude Lightning Above Thunderclouds

By: Nasa, National Aeronautics and Space Adm

Recently, extremely interesting high-altitude cloud-ionosphere electrical discharges, like lightning above thunderstorms, have been observed from NASA's space shuttle missions and during airborne and ground-based experiments. To understand these discharges, a new experiment was conceived to simulate a thundercloud in a vacuum chamber using a dielectric in particulate form into which electrodes were inserted to create charge centers analogous to those in an electrified cloud. To represent the ionosphere, a conducting medium (metallic plate) was introduced at the top of the chamber. It was found that for different pressures between approximately 1 and 300 mb, corresponding to various upper atmospheric altitudes, different discharges occurred above the simulated thundercloud, and these bore a remarkable similarity to the observed atmospheric phenomena. At pressures greater than 300 mb, these discharges were rare and only discharges within the simulated thundercloud were observed. Use of a particulate dielectric was critical for the successful simulation of the high-altitude lightning. Jarzembski, M. A. and Srivastava, V. Marshall Space Flight Center ...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1729009476
• ISBN13: 9781729009475
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 34 Pages
• Weight: 0.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 8.5" x 11.0"