SAline Liquids And Conductivity In the Atmosphere (SALACIA) is an instrument to study salts commonly found on the surface of Mars. It is currently being developed by a group of 16 students studying space science and engineering at the Kiruna campus of Luleå University of Technology in northern Sweden. The salts are thought to enable the formation of a water cycle on Mars. During night-time, when i
t can be extremely cold (down to -90°C!), the salts take in water from the atmosphere and bind it in a salty solution (a so called "brine"). When the temperatures rise during day-time, the water evaporates and is fed back into the Martian atmosphere. Our aim is to take a selection of those salts and launch them to the edge of space (80-90 km) on-board a sounding rocket. During its flight through Earth's atmosphere, our instrument will travel through many cold and dry areas. These can be thought of as Mars-like and are thus extremely interesting. We will study the behavior of the salts during flight and measure how much water they bind to themselves during the flight. The rocket is provided by the REXUS/BEXUS (Rocket/Balloon Experiment for University Students) programme with the launch being due in March 2017. During the flight, the perchlorates will be exposed to all the characteristics of a real-world rocket flight, as well as the outside atmospheric conditions. More information can be found on our website www.salacia.se
