Mojave Green is the name of the Aerotech propellant. (click photo to enlarge)
My Nike Smoke screamed into the night on a J500 motor, weather-cocking into the wind… but the LED light control electronics could not take the g’s, and so she went dark… somewhere overhead in the eerily silent night sky. We all looked up and listened.
Someone said they heard the pop of the parachute, who knows where, and so the recovery would have to wait ‘til the morning.
P.S. The neon green comes from barium ions excited in the plasma and dropping to their ground state, releasing photons of a precise wavelength. The ions come from metal chlorides: Barium Chloride (BaCl) for green, Copper Chloride (CuCl) for blue, or Strontium Chloride (SrCl) for red. These metal chlorides generally do not exist at room temperature or are too reactive to add as an additive, so precursors are mixed in, and they react during the burn to create the desired molecules. The Chlorine comes from the Ammonium Perchlorate oxidizer for free, and one need only add metal salts such as nitrates or carbonates to provide the metal atoms. In this case, Barium Nitrate is the additive that forms BaCl during the burn to emit a laser-like green in the flame. (propellant primer)
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