Traditionally, lower atmospheric research vehicles fall into two basic categories, aircraft and balloons. Both have their drawbacks from a research perspective. As an aircraft moves through the atmosphere, it disturbs the very medium that it has been sent to survey.
Helicopters generate even more turbulence.
Balloons are carried aloft by the wind currents and control over them to a pre-determined survey area is minimal. The solution to these survey difficulties lies in the implementation of low to mid-altitude sounding rockets. The flight regime of the low to mid altitude sounding rocket is from 25,000 to 100,000 feet. The primary advantage of being able to survey this range of altitudes is localization. Using locally launched recoverable sounding rockets, near real-time data collection can be performed to match the needs of the local survey.