New opportunities for studies of the polar atmosphere by means of sounding rockets and balloons

ARR is responsible for all sounding rockets and stratospheric balloon operations from Norwegian territory, including the Svalbard islands, and has an extensive record of successful launches since 1962. From the location far north of the Arctic Circle Andoya Rocket Range (ARR) provides complete services for launching, data acquisition, recovery and ground instrumentation support. The launching services are offered from sites on the mainland of Norway at 69degreesN, and from Svalbard (SvalRak) at 79degreesN. The geographical location, infrastructure and the network of ground-based instruments make the launch site at SvalRak favourable for studies of the dayside aurora, magnetospheres boundary layer processes and the magnetic cusp and cap. The paper will briefly present the infrastructure and scientific instrumentation and the science opportunities available both at Andoya and Svalbard. ARR is currently establishing a new launch site for stratospheric balloons, both long and short duration flights, at Svalbard.